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John V. Hansen's blogen-usThu, 22 Feb 2018 02:05:17 -0700Mon, 10 Jul 2017 00:53:00 -0700BlogCFChttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssno-reply@johnvhansen.comno-reply@johnvhansen.comno-reply@johnvhansen.comJohn's blog - www.johnvhansen.comhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm
noThe ‘Kolchak’-‘X-Files’ connection: Just how similar are these two shows?http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2017/7/10/The-KolchakXFiles-connection-Just-how-similar-are-these-two-shows
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Today, it's impossible to talk about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolchak%3A_The_Night_Stalker" target="_blank">"Kolchak: The Night Stalker"</a> (1974-75, following TV movies in 1972 and 1973) without talking about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files" target="_blank">"The X-Files"</a> (1993-present). While this annoys some "Kolchak" fans, they have to admit that "The X-Files" has helped keep the "Kolchak" cult afloat – indeed, "The X-Files" is mentioned in the first sentence on the back of the "Kolchak" DVD collection.
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Both "Kolchak" creator Jeff Rice and "X-Files" helmer Chris Carter are open about the connections. Writing the foreward to Ted Edwards' "X-Files Confidential: The Unauthorized X-Files Compendium" (1996), Rice writes: "I don't think anyone has done more to foster the idea of picking up where Kolchak left off ... than Carter," adding that it's "very gratifying."
Later, Edwards quotes Carter as saying, "I just wanted to do something as scary as I remember 'The Night Stalker' being when I was in my teens." On the other hand, Carter – who would later cast Darren McGavin as early FBI paranormal investigator Arthur Dales in two episodes -- adds: "Sometimes the 'Night Stalker' influence is overstated. ... I think I remember two scenes from the old show. One where Darren McGavin is confronted by a vampire and is able to drive a stake into his heart, and the other is in an alleyway."
After watching the "Kolchak" series, I think both stances are valid. In terms of tone, the two shows are nothing alike – "Kolchak" is corny and comedic, with occasional moments of horror, while "The X-Files" is exactly the opposite. They certainly share a genre – paranormal investigations – but they are at vastly different ends of that genre.
On the other hand – my, oh my -- there are some eerie similarities. Some parallels are merely cases where two paranormal anthology shows will eventually cover the same ground – for example, Mulder and Scully rapidly aging in "Dod Kalm" and various victims rapidly aging in "Kolchak's" "The Youth Killer." I'm also not going to get worked up over the use of voiceovers on both shows, or the use of Courier font in the opening credits. Or even the fact that both shows are inordinately interested in Native American lore.
But some examples are similar down to such small details that it's hard to imagine the "X-Files" scribes weren't cribbing from "Kolchak." Further bolstering that argument, most of the parallels are found in the early seasons of "The X-Files," suggesting the writers borrowed from "Kolchak" a bit before becoming steady on their own feet.
After watching the 22 "Kolchak" installments, it's clear that the truth is out there. Or, as Kolchak would say, "Now, here are the true facts ..." ("X-Files" episodes are listed first.)
"Deep Throat" (Season 1, Episode 2) vs. "They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be ..." (Episode 3) and "Mr. R.I.N.G." (12) – Mulder sees an alien spacecraft and has his memories wiped by government spooks. "How did I get here?" Mulder mumbles as Scully takes custody of him from the airbase officials. In "They Have Been," after he sees an alien spacecraft, Carl worries that his friends in Washington might be after him because of what he knows, but then the episode ends. However, at the end of "R.I.N.G.," where he investigates the government's haywire robot project, Kolchak's memory is hazy after being in the custody of military agents. "Memories fade fast enough without chemical help," Kolchak says into his tape recorder in the epilogue. "But if I don't tell this story now, I'm afraid I never will. Now ... what was that date?"
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"Squeeze" (1, 3) vs. "The Night Stalker" (1972 movie) and "The Night Strangler" (1973 movie) – Eugene Victor Tooms, the first and arguably still the best "X-Files" Monster of the Week, emerges from hibernation every 30 years to eat five human livers. "Strangler's" Richard Malcolm kills six people every 21 years for the sake of extending his life. Also, the zoom-in on Tooms' eyes feels like an homage to the close-up of vampire Janos Skorzeny's eyes in "Stalker."
"Ice" (1, 8) vs. "Primal Scream" (13) – In both cases, ice cores from the Arctic contain ancient life that wreaks havoc. In "Ice," it's a worm-like creature that crawls in your ear and causes paranoia, much like "The Thing," which this episode pays homage to (or rips off, depending on your perspective). The creature that (inexplicably) grows from the ice cores in "Scream" is (inexplicably) an apeman (or a guy in an ape suit, depending on your perspective).
"Fire" (1, 12) vs. "Firefall" (6) – The pyrokenetic Cecil L'Ively causes people or objects to spontaneously combust, like the villain in "Firefall." While the concept of pyrokenesis goes back to the 19th century – as some charlatans claimed they could create fire from nothing -- it perhaps entered pop culture with "Firefall," although it did so more prominently with Stephen King's novel "Firestarter" in 1980. That book, of course, is the more commonly cited precursor to "Fire."
"Shapes" (1, 19) vs. "The Werewolf" (5) – Mulder and Scully investigate a werewolf case in Montana. Kolchak encounters a werewolf on a cruise ship, and the man reveals that he was bitten in Montana. Since werewolf lore originated in Europe, there's nothing unique to Montana that makes it an obvious place for a werewolf story. "The X-Files" might've been paying homage to "Kolchak," but more likely the setting is due to many "X-Files" episodes being set in the Northwest during the Vancouver years.
"Fresh Bones" (2, 15) vs. "The Zombie" (2) – A Haitian voodoo zombie gets revenge on those who mistreated and murdered him – the military in "Bones," the mob in "Zombie." Kolchak must dispatch the zombie using rituals, whereas Mulder is spared from a direct showdown with a zombie, although he does run afoul of the military man performing rituals.
"Fearful Symmetry" (2, 18) vs. "They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be ..." (3) – Invisible creatures are on rampages – animals in "Symmetry," aliens in "They Have Been." The animals in "Symmetry" are influenced by aliens, since the zoo is near a UFO hotspot. In "They Have Been," the aliens break into a zoo, causing animals to run loose. Both episodes feature pro-animal, anti-human zookeepers. (And both are good examples of those episodes within each series that perhaps leave a little too much to the imagination, rather than tying together the plot a bit more.)
What are your thoughts on these "X-Files"-"Kolchak" connections? Coincidence ... or conspiracy? Share your thoughts in the comment thread below.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Mon, 10 Jul 2017 00:53:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2017/7/10/The-KolchakXFiles-connection-Just-how-similar-are-these-two-shows‘Secret Agendas’ offers more ‘X-Files’ prose, more mistakeshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/12/13/Secret-Agendas-offers-more-XFiles-prose-more-mistakes
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I'll take my fix of new "X-Files" material where I can get it, but it's irritating that in IDW's third volume of "X-Files" short stories, <a href="https://www.idwpublishing.com/product/x-files-anthology-vol-3-secret-agendas/" target="_blank">"Secret Agendas,"</a> Jonathan Maberry and his team (if there is one) still make too many errors. The line-editing gaffes, such as "peak" instead of "peek," aren't as numerous as in the first volume, but the number of continuity errors is inexcusable.
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One story tells us it is set in November 2002 – after Season 9, when the Files are closed and Mulder and Scully are off the grid – but somehow the duo is investigating a case and flashing their FBI badges. In at least two stories, the way the agents greet each other is off-point – "Fox," "Dana" and "Mr. Skinner" instead of "Mulder," "Scully" and "Skinner" – as if the writer hadn't watched the TV series. In one yarn, Mulder is inexplicably skeptical of a paranormal possibility, and in another, he's anxious to depart the case, having been spooked out. In another story -- supposedly set during her skeptic phase -- Scully is as well-versed in the conspiracy lore as Mulder is.
A lot of these entries feel like audition pieces where the author is trying to capture the right tone, and about half of them don't quite connect. That having been said, it's not like there are dozens of new "X-Files" volumes to choose from. If you want your "Files" prose fix, "Secret Agendas" offers some pleasures. Here are the 10 best short stories out of the book's 15:
1. "Love Lost" by Yvonne Navarro (2015, Baltimore/Washington International Airport) – Considering that Navarro wasn't one of my favorite "Buffy" tie-in writers, this is surprisingly the best entry of this volume (which also features a couple more "Buffy" novelists). In present day, Scully believes she sees her high school boyfriend, Marcus -- unaged -- in the airport. Then we learn she had not seen him since he went missing back in the day. It's a stretch that she had never mentioned this before – especially since a missing loved one is central to Mulder's life – but I'll buy it, since Scully does have a history of playing her personal life close to the vest and because she had assumed there were rational reasons for Marcus' disappearance. Bonus points for guest turns by Marita Covarrubias and Alex Krycek.
2. "Kanashibari" by Ryan Cady (1993, Southern California) – Although it's very similar to an issue from the Topps comics, I appreciate this SoCal-based story of Japan's "Old Hag" ghost lore for its meat-and-potatoes portrayal of the way our agents investigate the case and put clues together.
3. "Grandmother Black Hands" by Weston Ochse (2002, Fort Apache, Ariz.) – The military writer breaks free of his area of expertise and pens a solid story about a Native American curse set in the "Files" favorite stomping grounds of the desert Southwest. It can't possibly be set in November 2002, as the time-stamp indicates, but the events play fine if you overlook that mistake.
4. "Seek and You Will Find" by John Gilstrap (2000, Manassas, Va.) – "Secret Agendas" kicks off with Mulder in fine form as the only person who believes a teenager who says he didn't kill his friend, despite all evidence to the contrary. The fact that Mulder literally travels into another dimension to pursue the case is a bit more blunt than the "X-Files" norm, but I think a TV episode could've pulled off this story with a subtle touch.
5. "Perithecia" by Andy Mangels (undated, Purcell, Okla.) – The author, who has written "Roswell" tie-ins and "Star Wars" reference books, gives us a story in the tradition of the mythology actioners, where Mulder nearly gets himself killed after discovering a secret government experiment (which is then promptly covered up). Bonus points for a guest appearance by Mulder's informant, X.
6. "Transmissions" by Marsheila Rockwell and Jeffrey Mariotte (1996, Sulphur Springs Valley, Ariz.) – Yet another tale in the desert Southwest, this one (co-written by Mariotte, from the old "Buffy" novel gang) taps into the concept of people being controlled by their TV satellite dishes. It's a little blunt in its delivery, but it fits in the tradition of Season 1's "Conduit," Season 3's "Wetwired" and Season 5's "Kill Switch."
7. "Thanks and Praise" by Joe Harris (undated, New York City) – There are two "X-Files" continuities now, and that caused confusion for some readers in Volume 1, which featured a story where the Lone Gunmen are alive in present day, as per the "Season 10" comics continuity. This one helpfully starts with a note that says it comes from the pre-TV-revival continuity; comics author Harris takes us deeper into Gibson Praise's strategy for using the rebirthed Syndicate and the Acolytes in Season 10. It's a satisfying way to get a better understanding of Harris' dense comics arc.
8. "All Choked Up" by Lois H. Grash (1996, Washington, D.C.) – This one pushes the envelope to the point where I was certain it was all a dream sequence, but I'll (just barely) let it get away with it. Grash posits that there are several sub-basement levels below Mulder's office in the Hoover building. The agents flat-out follow the Smoking Man to find an experiment in one of the hidden rooms, and then flat-out attack him.
9. "Stryzga" by Lauren H. Forry (1994, Pocono Mountains, Pa.) – In this story of a monster in the Pennsylvania woods, Forry shows more knowledge of the region than of the main characters -- at one point, Mulder declines an offer to stay in a camp's cabins in order to track the nocturnal creature; you'd think he'd jump at the opportunity. But it does work as a nice companion piece to the Season 3 classic "Quagmire," where the "monster" might be Earth-bound after all. Bonus points for the very "X-Files"-ish title.
10. "A Scandal in Moreauvia, or The Adventure of the Empty Heart" by Nancy Holder (1995, London) – Holder, another of those "Buffy" tie-in veterans, bites off more than she can chew here, with an attempt at giving the "Files" a Holmesian feel. Still, it is fun to revisit Mulder's ex-girlfriend Phoebe Green from Season 1's "Fire"; the series itself tended to forget about M&S's old acquaintances who were peppered throughout the first season.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumTue, 13 Dec 2016 12:39:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/12/13/Secret-Agendas-offers-more-XFiles-prose-more-mistakes‘X-Files’ flashback: 2016 miniserieshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/6/19/XFiles-flashback-2016-miniseries
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It was great to have "The X-Files" back with the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/episodes?season=10&ref_=tt_eps_sn_10" target="_blank">six-episode miniseries</a> earlier this year on Fox, and now it's available on DVD, and you get a lot of nice bonus features (including commentaries on three episodes) for your $14. I prefer the small-screen method of reviving the show, rather than the big screen, as it allows different types of "X-Files" stories to be told for about the same time and cost commitment as a movie.
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In this miniseries, we get two mythology episodes (which bookend the season) and four standalones, one of which is the most brilliant Darin Morgan comedy piece yet. The other three aren't quite typical standalones, as Mulder and Scully's low-key grief over the loss of their son William to adoption 15 years earlier (something they felt was necessary for his safety) underscores two of them. And the other one features a human monster rather than a typical X-Files monster.
The best part of the return of "The X-Files" is simply that: "The X-Files" is back, and Chris Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson haven't forgotten how to do this. Rather than a nostalgia trip, the 2016 "X-Files" feels timely and urgent, as the first episode references the laundry list of post-9/11 horrors, even if it does so in monologues from Mulder and "Truth Squad" host Tad O'Malley (Joel McHale) rather than by working those elements into the script directly.
It makes sense that M&S would want to return to their old jobs; indeed, Scully says that she had forgotten how much fun these cases could be. Still, the old believer/skeptic dynamic was shattered long ago, so when Scully tells Mulder or O'Malley that their conspiratorial assertions are dangerous, we know it's only a matter of time before she'll be fully on their side. Additionally, early attempts to show that Mulder loathes O'Malley don't ring true, as they share the same world view and goals. Mulder shouldn't be so petty as to begrudge O'Malley the fact that he's making a living by digging into conspiracies; and also, what's Mulder's excuse for not having written that book yet?
Casual fans should have no trouble picking up the broad strokes of the mythology again – or for the first time, even. It's basically the stuff we knew before, except that the aliens' motives have been recast. Rather than an evil partnership between aliens and the Syndicate, it's actually the Syndicate alone (well, at this point, it's the Cigarette-Smoking Man alone at the top, with the wheels of government and international coalitions doing the dirty work out in the open) that has big plans for the human race. The aliens actually had good intentions when they first visited in 1947, but they were immediately betrayed, and their technology was hoarded by the secret cabal.
It's actually die-hard fans who might be thrown off by the fact that M&S somehow became estranged since the events of 2008's "I Want to Believe," that they have not returned to the X-Files beat as per IDW comics' Season 10 in 2013 and that the Lone Gunmen are still dead (in the comics, they faked their deaths). It's clear now that the IDW comics are on a separate continuity, despite being overseen by Carter.
While the Season 10-11 continuity is over, this new one seems to have some legs: IDW launched a title following from this miniseries, but even more notably for TV fans, it seems like we'll get more "X-Files" on the tube. The miniseries finale ends on a cliffhanger – with Mulder's life in serious jeopardy -- and the last two episodes build two new agents, Einstein and Miller, into the proceedings. Mulder and Scully are still central to the goings-on, but if Duchovny's and Anderson's schedules are limited, it seems the storytelling could work around that if it had to.
(Of course, that leads to the question of whether the property would have good ratings for very long without M&S. After all, ratings dropped when Doggett and Reyes took over in Seasons 8 and 9. But count me in, at least, for an Einstein and Miller series. Perhaps they could take over the X-Files beat with Mulder and Scully serving as consultants. And M&S could also work cases on their own when E&M are on other cases.)
Here are my rankings of the six episodes from the miniseries:
1. "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster" (episode 3, written by Darin Morgan) – The man responsible for the famous offbeat episodes of the original run, starting with Season 2's "Humbug," Morgan has always been a perfectionist. For example, he dislikes his "War of the Coprophages," even though fans love it. "Were-Monster" is what a Morgan script looks like with a decade to perfect it (although he probably wasn't working on it for quite that long), and it's a masterpiece.
Rhys Darby gives a pitch-perfect guest turn as a monster who is bitten by a human – a reverse of the standard were-monster mythology. Thus, he turns into a human and goes through the horrifying and bizarre experience of feeling like he desperately desires a job, money, the companionship of a pet, and to lie about his sex life. Another humorous guest spot comes from Kumail Nanjiani, who in addition to being an actor is also the host of "The X-Files Files" podcast, which was instrumental in drumming up interest for this miniseries.
2 and 3. "My Struggle" (1, Chris Carter) and "My Struggle II" (6, Carter, Anne Simon, Margaret Fearon) – This two-parter restates, revamps and somewhat simplifies the mythology. At first, it gets by just by feeling like vintage "X-Files," then it peppers in references to the modern police and spy states ("Now they police us and spy on us and tell us it makes us safer," Mulder says. "We've never been in more danger.")
Amid some misleads (Scully doesn't have alien DNA ... oh wait, yes she does) and silly devices (O'Malley's Internet show flickers on the screen to illustrate that the infrastructure is collapsing), we learn the Syndicate isn't working with aliens after all. And their plan of culling the weak with a virus and restarting a humans-with-alien-DNA race is coming to fruition.
After the exposition-heavy premiere outlines the basics, the kinetic second part is a thriller in the vein of "Outbreak"; co-writers Simon and Fearon are doctors who Carter likely brought in to provide some hard science behind Scully's talk about forging a cure from her own alien-hybrid DNA. The virus has been spreading since 2012, says former agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), blackmailed into helping the Cigarette-Smoking Man, whose nose and right cheek are now artificial, a nice Darth Vader parallel. (It's a hoary way to bring back Reyes, but I guess it's better than not having her back at all, as is the case with John Doggett.) The idea that the virus was released in 2012 is a way for the show to tie in its promise from the Season 9 finale that the end of the world coming in December 2012, as per the Mayan calendar.
In the end, all the William references from the mini-season pay off when Scully realizes she'll need stem cells from the son she and Mulder put up for adoption in order to save Mulder. But she doesn't know where he is. And also, an alien ship arrives. Unlike the end of Season 9 or "I Want to Believe," this is hardly a note of finality – it's a promise that more adventures are coming. Here's hoping it's not a lie.
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4. "Babylon" (5, Carter) – This episode struggles to serve several different masters, but it's still engrossing. Rather than monsters, the villains are humans: Islamic terrorists who blow up a Texas building; the X-File element is that Mulder thinks he can read a comatose bomber's mind to learn the motive and future targets. When Mulder takes pills that will allow him to communicate on the astral plane, the tone shifts to a hallucinating Mulder line dancing to "Achy Breaky Heart" and "Honky Tonk Badondadonk" and playing cards with the late Lone Gunmen. Admittedly, it's hard to not enjoy this bizarre sequence. Then it concludes with a hopeful denouement where M&S believe the worldwide cycle of violence -- the greatest challenge of our time – can be overcome.
But the best part of the episode is the introduction of Agents Einstein (Lauren Ambrose) and Miller (Robbie Amell), who are visually younger versions of Mulder and Scully. They play out the believer-skeptic dynamic with a fresh spin. Einstein is the red-haired skeptic, but she's the fiery older agent whereas open-minded Miller is the more tentative younger one.
5. "Home Again" (4, Glen Morgan) – Despite the title and the fact that it's written by Morgan, this is not a sequel to "Home" (for that, check out the excellent IDW Season 11 comic story of the same name). One nod to the original "Home" is that an old radio standard – in this case, "Downtown" rather than "Wonderful! Wonderful!" – plays atop the killing scenes.
This is one of those "X-Files" where the goings-on are completely inexplicable: a golem-like creature puts up paintings around town and can also make them disappear. And he can make himself appear and reappear at various places at will. An episode highlight is Anderson's acting showcase, as Scully deals with her mom's death and daydreams about herself as a mom dropping William off at school.
6. "Founder's Mutation" (2, Carter and James Wong) – This is "X-Files" meets "X-Men," as the perpetrator turns out to be a boy who can get into people's heads and send them messages or make them do things. Unfortunately, the message is in the form of a grating, screeching sound that illustrates the point well but isn't too pleasant for the home audience. Still, since this is the agents' first case since returning to the job, the episode gets a lot of mileage out of the thrill of the familiar, engaging routine. And just as the Scully-William scenes are a highlight of "Home Again," this episode ends with Mulder poignantly imagining that he's teaching William how to launch model rockets.
What are your rankings of the six miniseries episodes? And do you think "The X-Files" will be back on TV in the future? If so, in what form – as more miniseries, or as a regular series with Ambrose and Amell in the lead roles?
Click <a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/Index-XFiles-Reviews" target="_blank">here</a> for more of my "X-Files" TV, movie, comics and book reviews.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionSun, 19 Jun 2016 00:04:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/6/19/XFiles-flashback-2016-miniseries‘The Truth is Out There’ serves up another mixed bag of ‘X-Files’ short storieshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/5/The-Truth-is-Out-There-serves-up-another-mixed-bag-of-XFiles-short-stories
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<a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/product/x-files-the-truth-is-out-there/" target="_blank">"The Truth is Out There,"</a> the February follow-up to last year's "Trust No One," serves up another mixed bag of "X-Files" short stories that's on par with the first collection. It's not "The X-Files" at its finest, but it's a fun assortment that will tide fans over between comic installments.
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The biggest improvement in Volume 2 is in the line editing; there are probably 90 percent fewer typos and grammatical errors. However, the continuity problems are more prevalent. This book is from comic publisher IDW, and it says so prominently on the spine, but an introductory note explaining that these stories are part of the IDW comics continuity would have helped.
(The comics continuity and TV continuity branch off in 2013. In the comics continuity, Mulder and Scully rejoin the X-Files, they are still a happy couple and the Lone Gunmen are revealed to be alive. In the TV continuity, M&S rejoin the X-Files in 2016, they are separated and the Gunmen have not been revealed to be alive. Further confusing matters, a comic series based on the TV continuity launches this month.)
At least one continuity mistake is completely inexcusable: In Hank Schwaeble's "Male Privilege," the agents investigate an X-File in 2006, which is during the period when they were not only off the X-Files, but also the X-Files were closed and M&S were keeping their distance from the FBI as much as possible.
Still, there are some fun ideas explored among these 15 short stories. Here are my picks for the 10 best:
1. "Black Hole Son" by Kami Garcia (1977, Massachusetts) – The short-story anthologies (and comics, for that matter) need to produce more stories like this one, which tells of a teenage Fox Mulder digging into his sister's disappearance. The surprising highlight is his crush on his best friend, Phoebe (not to be confused with Phoebe Green from Season 1's "Fire," although it does show that Mulder has a thing for girls named Phoebe).
2. "XXX" by Glenn Greenberg (1999, California) – Especially toward the later seasons, "The X-Files" began to find a layer of winky humor amid serious stories of bizarre and gruesome deaths. Remarkably, the show never really went all-in with an episode having fun with Mulder's porn addiction, but Greenberg makes up for it here as M&S investigate a case involving Mulder's favorite adult-film actress.
3. "Heart" by Kendare Blake (1995, New Jersey) – The Topps comics briefly touched on the idea of strange connections between organ donors and their recipients in Issue 23, "Donor." This yarn is a meatier character piece as we get into the head of a quiet old man named Arthur who gradually takes on the decidedly different traits of the murder victim from whom he received a heart.
4. "Mummiya" by Greg Cox (1996, Washington) – Cox, the author of some "Terminator" novels, tells an effectively creepy tale about a terminal patient who attempts to mummify and resurrect herself via ancient magic – somewhat in the vein of Season 4's "Kaddish" -- with a nice twist at the end.
5. "Voice of Experience" by Rachel Caine (1993, Washington, D.C.) – This story features a villain who mesmerizes people and drains their emotions by making eye contact with them, which is the perfect type of character for the written word rather than for TV. The way Mulder finds clues through the villain's work as a professional novelist is also a fun concept.
6. "Dead Ringer" by Kelly Armstrong (1993, Pennsylvania) – Mulder and Scully discover corpses that are genetic matches to people who are still alive, something that feels like a vintage X-File. The concept of faeries deviates a bit from the premise, as "The X-Files" doesn't delve into mystical creatures too often. But the idea of beings who take over the lives of murder victims to help the families is intriguingly bittersweet.
7. "Snowman" by Sarah Stegall (2001, Washington) – Agent Doggett is usually ignored in IDW's work, so Stegall gets bonus points for featuring him. As Mulder joins the adventure, this ends up being a decent exploration of both the Abominable Snowman legend and a scary military experiment. The only misfire is that Stegall makes Doggett too much of a skeptic, as he had already experienced a season's worth of X-Files as Scully's partner at this point.
8. "Drive Time" by John McGoran (2016, Massachusetts) – McGoran delivers a mind-bending time-travel story that calls to mind Season 4's similarly weird-science-based "Synchrony." The yarn would also sit well in the "Terminator" universe, particularly the over-the-top conclusion where multiple versions of the time traveler wink out of existence every time an older version of the time traveler is killed.
9. "We Should Listen to Some Shostakovich" by Hank Phillippi Ryan (2017, Washington, D.C.) – The mystery centered on clues hidden in a series of paintings doesn't play as well with the written word as it would visually, but this is a remarkable entry for another reason: It's chronologically the last story in the IDW comics timeline, and it provides some major details. Scully's mom (who died in the TV miniseries) is still alive and well, M&S move into a new house, and they have another baby, named Allie.
10. "Pilot" by David Liss (1996, Washington, D.C.) – Liss gets meta with "The X-Files" as M&S are introduced to an alternate universe where they aren't real people, but rather characters on a TV show. It doesn't work as well as, say, Season 7's "Hollywood A.D." – where the agents' lives are portrayed in a show-within-the-show – but it's still an entertaining attempt.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumThu, 05 May 2016 00:01:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/5/The-Truth-is-Out-There-serves-up-another-mixed-bag-of-XFiles-short-stories‘X-Files: Deviations’ one-shot a pointless take on a gimmicky concepthttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/2/XFiles-Deviations-oneshot-a-pointless-take-on-a-gimmicky-concept
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-deviations.jpg">
IDW's Seasons 10 and 11, despite initially being canonical, ended up being an interesting "what if" story when Chris Carter changed his mind and wrote a new story for TV. The one-shot comic <a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/product/x-files-deviations-one-shot/" target="_blank">"X-Files: Deviations"</a> (March) is an alternate-universe story right from the get-go. In the spirit of Marvel's "What If?" and Dark Horse's "Star Wars Infinities" titles, the "Deviations" series tells "what if" stories in the worlds of "X-Files," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Ghostbusters," "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe."
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Any time a comic company launches a gimmicky concept, be wary (see also 2014's "X-Files: Conspiracy"). That advice rings prescient with "X-Files: Deviations," subtitled "Time and Being." The premise is that instead of Samantha Mulder getting abducted by aliens, Fox Mulder gets abducted. OK, fair enough. But rather than seeing over the course of 24 pages the drastic ways the world changes, writer Amy Chu – seemingly not engaged with this premise at all – imagines that Samantha takes the exact same path to becoming an X-Files agent.
The final-panel twist, such as it is, is that Fox Mulder is in league with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who seemed to have raised Fox as a son. He indulges Fox by letting him visit the now-abandoned house he grew up in, but chastises him for nearly being spotted by Sam and Scully, who are also at the house as part of Sam's obsession with her brother's disappearance. Since Fox isn't revealed until the final panel, a reader gets no insight into how Mulder turns out different having been raised by the CSM.
The CSM looking over Fox is somewhat similar to the real story, wherein the Syndicate grew some Samantha clones. The CSM tried to pass off a Samantha clone (Megan Leitch, whose likeness is used in "Deviations") as Mulder's sister. Possibly, in the real timeline, the Syndicate would've looked after Samantha after the aliens were done with her, but she was abducted (by a human this time) and murdered while still a child, as we found out in Season 7's "Closure."
OK, so in what ways is the Sam-Scully partnership different? Well, at one point the two female agents are nearly run off the road by a young man inquiring if they're up for a threesome. That's different from what Fox and Dana would encounter. But that's about it. It's almost stunning how much this comic fails to deviate from the original narrative.
The only reason to pick up "Deviations," then, is for the mild visual kick of seeing Samantha play out the beats of the classic "No one down here but the FBI's most unwanted" scene, complete with pencils stuck in the office ceiling. (See, I told you it was the EXACT same path.)
If this were merely Issue 1 of an "X-Files: Deviations" miniseries, I'd say it's off to a decent start, although I'd hope more inspiration would strike in later issues. But it was only ever intended to be one issue, so I would've liked a lot more deviation from the familiar story.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksMon, 02 May 2016 00:05:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/2/XFiles-Deviations-oneshot-a-pointless-take-on-a-gimmicky-conceptIndex of my ‘X-Files’ reviewshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/25/Index-of-my-XFiles-reviews
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-logo.jpg">
Here's an index of my "X-Files"/"Millennium" reviews in TV, movies, books and comics:
TELEVISION AND FILMS
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/10/22/My-top-10-Season-1-XFiles-episodes" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 1 (1993-94)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/6/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-2" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 2 (1994-95)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/25/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-3" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 3 (1995-96)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/12/18/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-4" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 4 (1996-97)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-5" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 5 (1997-98)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-Fight-the-Future" target="_blank">"X-Files: Fight the Future" (1998)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/2/26/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-6" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 6 (1998-99)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/3/19/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-7" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 7 (1999-2000)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/4/9/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-8" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 8 (2000-01)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/6/12/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-9" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 9 (2001-02)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/9/3/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-I-Want-to-Believe" target="_blank">"X-Files: I Want to Believe" (2008)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/6/19/XFiles-flashback-2016-miniseries" target="_blank">"X-Files" 2016 miniseries</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/9/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-1" target="_blank">"Millennium" Season 1 (1996-97)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/6/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-2" target="_blank">"Millennium" Season 2 (1997-98)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/30/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-3" target="_blank">"Millennium" Season 3 (1998-99)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/5/8/Oneseason-wonders-The-Lone-Gunmen" target="_blank">"The Lone Gunmen" (2001)</a>
BOOKS
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/24/XFiles-flashback-Goblins-1994" target="_blank">"Goblins" by Charles Grant (1994)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/26/XFiles-flashback-Whirlwind-1995" target="_blank">"Whirlwind" by Charles Grant (1995)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/28/XFiles-flashback-Ground-Zero-1995" target="_blank">"Ground Zero" by Kevin J. Anderson (1995)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/3/XFiles-flashback-Ruins-1996" target="_blank">"Ruins" by Kevin J. Anderson (1996)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/6/XFiles-flashback-Antibodies-1997" target="_blank">"Antibodies" by Kevin J. Anderson (1997)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/10/XFiles-flashback-Skin-1999" target="_blank">"Skin" by Ben Mezrich (1999)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/6/Short-story-collection-Trust-No-One-whets-appetite-for-return-of-XFiles" target="_blank">"Trust No One" short-story collection (2015)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/5/The-Truth-is-Out-There-serves-up-another-mixed-bag-of-XFiles-short-stories" target="_blank">"The Truth is Out There" short-story collection (2016)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/12/13/Secret-Agendas-offers-more-XFiles-prose-more-mistakes" target="_blank">"Secret Agendas" short-story collection (2016)</a>
COMIC BOOKS
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/20/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-112-1995" target="_blank">Topps Issues 1-12 (1995)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/26/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-1324-1996" target="_blank">Topps Issues 13-24 (1996)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/28/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-2536-1997" target="_blank">Topps Issues 25-36 (1997)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/29/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-3741-1998" target="_blank">Topps Issues 37-41 (1998)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/2/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-specials-199597-and-Dark-Horse-Lone-Gunmen-oneshot-2001" target="_blank">Topps annuals, digests and special issues (1995-97)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/2/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-specials-199597-and-Dark-Horse-Lone-Gunmen-oneshot-2001" target="_blank">Dark Horse "Lone Gunmen" one-shot (2001)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/9/XFiles-flashback-Wildstorm-Comics-Issues-06-200809" target="_blank">Wildstorm Issues 0-6 (2008-09)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/14/XFiles-flashback-XFiles30-Days-of-Night-comics-201011" target="_blank">Wildstorm/IDW "30 Days of Night" crossover miniseries (2010-11)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-19-201314" target="_blank">IDW Season 10 Issues 1-9 (2013-14)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/22/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1017-2014" target="_blank">IDW Season 10 Issues 10-17 (2014)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/25/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1825-201415" target="_blank">IDW Season 10 Issues 18-25 (2014-15)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/25/Joe-Harris-wraps-up-Gibson-Praise-saga-with-truncated-XFiles-Season-11" target="_blank">IDW Season 11 Issues 1-8 (2015-16)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/9/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Conspiracy-miniseries-2014" target="_blank">IDW "Conspiracy" miniseries (2014)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/14/XFiles-flashback-Year-Zero-2014" target="_blank">IDW "Year Zero" miniseries (2014)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Millennium-miniseries-2015" target="_blank">IDW "Millennium" miniseries (2015)</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/21/XFiles-flashback-2014-Annual-and-XMas-Special" target="_blank">IDW 2014 Annual and X-Mas Special</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/24/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-2015-Annual-and-XMas-Special" target="_blank">IDW 2015 Annual and X-Mas Special</a>
<a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/5/2/XFiles-Deviations-oneshot-a-pointless-take-on-a-gimmicky-concept" target="_blank">IDW "Deviations" one-shot (2016)</a>
MoviesBooksX-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Comic books*Index: X-Files ReviewsMon, 25 Apr 2016 15:35:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/25/Index-of-my-XFiles-reviewsJoe Harris wraps up Gibson Praise saga with truncated ‘X-Files: Season 11’http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/25/Joe-Harris-wraps-up-Gibson-Praise-saga-with-truncated-XFiles-Season-11
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-11.jpg">
<a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/product-category/the-x-files/the-x-files-season-11/" target="_blank">IDW's "X-Files: Season 11 comic series</a> (August 2015-March 2016) is the latest epic story to get truncated due to outside commercial forces. Usually, those outside forces are bad (see the cancellation of TV's "Angel" and "Dollhouse" due to low ratings, or the cancellation of the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe – two years ago to this day – to make room for Disney's vision). In this case, those outside forces are good – the return of "The X-Files" to TV, with six episodes earlier this year and hopefully more in the future. But it still led to the shortening of Joe Harris' meticulously crafted Gibson Praise saga – which started back in Season 10, Issue 1, in 2013 – and that's a shame.
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In a letter at the back of the conclusive Issue 8, Harris admits "it wasn't without sadness when we realized the story I had originally projected to run for another 15-plus issues would need to be reimagined after early news of the show's return began to trickle out last year, and the desire to launch a new comics series that would reflect the show's lead seemed an obvious move."
As with "Star Wars" EU fans, this is a case where the die-hard "X-Files" fan gets pushed aside for the casual fan. It's a supreme irony that the comic is considered to be aimed at die-hard fans, yet it also needs to be canceled so as not to confuse casual fans, who might pick up an "X-Files" comic and become a serious fan. The circular logic is almost as mind-boggling as Praise's machinations throughout Seasons 10 and 11.
I would've liked to have read Harris' full 25-issue Season 11, but since I'm in a group deemed to be the minority (the group actually purchasing every "X-Files" comic), I'll never get that. So all we can judge is his eight-issue Season 11. As someone who loves a tight continuity in my sci-fi sagas, the thing I most hoped to see in the conclusion was Gibson using his time-manipulation powers to position Mulder and Scully back in 2013, thus "wiping out" the events of the comic series from the characters' minds – similar to how Mulder has had his memories erased after seeing flying saucers -- while still retaining them as a "true" part of the saga. Harris doesn't precisely do that, but he kind of does, through the invention of a "crucible" in "Endgames" (Issues 6-8), the trilogy that seems to mark the point at which he had to aggressively re-imagine and the Season 11 arc for the sake of shortening it.
Mulder: "What is this place, Gibson?"
Gibson: "A looking glass with infinite planes and surfaces. A focal point, where that temporal phenomenon so artfully employed by those beyond the stars is harnessed. In this crucible of my design and creation, almost anything is possible."
Artist Matthew Dow Smith draws images on the prisms of the Crucible, and one of them shows Mulder wearing the jacket from the premiere of the 2016 miniseries, with his back turned to Scully. This seems to indicate the alternate ("true," if you will) reality of the TV timeline, where M&S's relationship is strained. Issue 8 ends with Mulder stepping out of the Crucible. However, there is no timeline reset; we're left with the notion that the Seasons 10-11 comics timeline goes forward, even as we readers will be switching over to the TV miniseries timeline when the new ongoing "X-Files" title launches this month. So, to summarize: Seasons 10-11 exist in the same multiverse as the TV miniseries, but not the same universe -- Harris doesn't directly link the two timelines together. Basically, he splits the difference.
Consider me mildly satisfied.
Setting aside continuity concerns, is Season 11 any good from a story perspective? Mostly, yes. Much of the season consists of Gibson controlling people with escalating levels of power. Praise gets Scully to help apprehend Mulder for the FBI, and controls Skinner in the finale. Gibson's machinations would have been more satisfying if we could've seen where Harris planned to go with them in a 25-issue arc. Even his origin story, Issue 5 ("My Name is Gibson Praise"), didn't allow me to totally grasp his perspective or sympathize with him. I get the idea that he's lonely because he's super-smart. But how that necessities or excuses him causing mass destruction and death, I'm not sure.
As it stands, we get gray aliens, faceless alien rebels, Mulder on the run from his own employers – a lot of old-hat stuff. The revelation that Mulder and Scully's boss, Deputy Director Morales, is a faceless alien rebel, is pretty satisfying, as it links with the end of the 2015 "Season 11 X-Mas Special" wherein she was (inexplicably at the time) narrating the story from an alien point-of-view. Harris' chronicle of CANTUS – a powerful force in the military-industrial and governmental spying complexes – is on-point and timely (he even makes use of the real-world NSA facility in Utah), but I miss the deeper levels he would've explored in a full-length season.
The highlight of Season 11 is actually its lone Monster of the Month arc, Issues 2-4 ("Home Again"). Admittedly, "Home Again" does have a substantial amount of mytharc material, but even Harris would probably admit the main point in having Gibson send Mulder to Garden County, Nebraska, to rediscover the Peacock family is to tell a good horror sequel. Interestingly, the TV miniseries features an episode titled "Home Again," but even though it's written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, the scribes behind Season 4's "Home," it is not related to "Home." Season 11's "Home Again," on the other hand, is a sequel.
And it's a darn good one, even better than Season 10's "Hosts," as Harris delivers great sexual horror, particularly at the conclusion of Issue 2 when Mulder is coerced into procreating not with the young female Peacock – who is not particularly attractive, but who at least looks human – but rather with the old limbless matriarch who is rolled out from under the bed! Pepper in swarms of Peacock toddlers who have faces of deformed old men, Edmund's method of feeding his mother by chewing and regurgitating food, and the implication that failed Peacock babies are fed to the pigs, and this is envelope-pushing "X-Files" horror in the finest tradition of the original "Home," which Fox refused to air in reruns for several years.
Additionally, Harris gives us flashbacks to the car crash that killed the Peacock patriarch and maimed the mother. This adds another level of horror because we can now sympathize with the Peacocks on a human level, whereas in "Home" they were safely in the category of the unrelatable "other."
If IDW's new ongoing "X-Files" title is going to tie in with Chris Carter's TV plans like it promises (I don't necessarily believe the promise, as Season 10-11 was supposed to be the "official" continuation, too ... until it wasn't anymore), it will want to consider using the Topps and Wildstorm approach to "The X-Files" – telling stories set before the current point of the TV narrative. This means more standalone issues, which might be disappointing for Harris, whose work so far has been 75 percent mytharc stories. On the plus side, "Home Again" demonstrates that he has tremendous talent for writing Monster of the Month yarns, too.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksMon, 25 Apr 2016 14:40:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/25/Joe-Harris-wraps-up-Gibson-Praise-saga-with-truncated-XFiles-Season-11‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW’s 2015 Annual and X-Mas Specialhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/24/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-2015-Annual-and-XMas-Special
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-2015-annual.jpg">
While the 2014 Annual and X-Mas Special featured multiple standalone yarns in each issue, IDW takes a different tactic with the 2015 installments, part of the new <a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/product-category/the-x-files/the-x-files-season-11/" target="_blank">Season 11</a> banner. Both issues feature one double-length story, and while the Annual's story is a standalone set during the heyday of the TV series, the X-Mas Special heavily ties into the events of Season 11.
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The Annual (July) is a bit of a breather before Season 11 proper (which launched in August), as regular scribe Joe Harris allows Michael Raicht to take a crack at "The X-Files." "Most Likely To ..." has elements of Season 1's "Lazarus" and – even more so -- Ray Garton's short story "Paranormal Quest," from the June 2015 collection "Trust No One." Due to the close release dates of "Paranormal Quest" and "Most Likely To ...," it's almost certain that Garton and Raicht were unaware of each other's works.
The fictional TV show in Raicht's story is called "Ghost Encounter Survivors." A husband-and-wife team, Tristan and Kelly, explores haunted houses, trading in on their personal background: As high school students, their friend Colin Mathews either died or vanished in a haunted house they were exploring.
In an unusual start to an X-File, Mulder makes himself a part of the action, pretending to be Colin at the 20-year class reunion in 1999 in Marcellus, N.Y. Although Tristan and Kelly know he's not Colin, Mulder's brash action allows him to delve into the case and pick up clues. Raicht does a nice job showing the relationship between the coy Mulder and the supposedly put-upon Scully, who complains about Mulder dragging her into this charade yet also is intrigued by the mystery.
"Most Likely To ..." doesn't break any new ground, but it's a just-plain-fun read nonetheless.
Harris' "Season 11 X-Mas Special" (December) should ideally be read as part of the Season 11 narrative, after Issue 5. As with most of Harris' "X-Files" works, it's meticulously crafted and centered on the godlike Gibson Praise's manipulations of various people and groups. By the end of the story, I still didn't know Gibson's plan – we're not supposed to know yet – but I enjoyed the ride well enough.
The highlight is that the Lone Gunmen are prominently featured. Langly and Frohike get abducted by gray aliens, and Harris indulges in some dark humor. Frohike's "Listen up, butt probers!" is almost as good as his threat of an "ass-paddling" back in the "Lone Gunmen" TV series. But overall, this is a serious piece, as we see that Gibson is willing to kill not only obvious baddies (the faceless aliens, who are enemies of the grays, who seem to be Gibson's allies), but also innocent people. He offs a planeload of innocents just for the sake of landing a plane. And he theoretically could have just mind-wiped them all, as that's what he does with our reunited heroes' – Scully finds Mulder, and Byers finds his pals -- at the story's end.
I think Gibson's mind-wiping power – combined with his ability to yank people out of the past and into the present, as he does to Krycek in Season 10 – presents an intriguing possibility for Harris to use time-manipulation to square the comics narrative (where M&S return to the X-Files beat in 2013) with that of the TV miniseries (where they return to the job in 2016).
The final page of "Season 11 X-Mas Special" shows us a human woman who had been narrating the whole thing from what sounded like an alien's perspective: "Allow them their appearances and their holiday lies ... our moment is at hand." If this were a TV episode, I'd be able to tell who the woman is supposed to be, but in comic form, I'm not sure. The art by Matthew Dow Smith is, as always, a perfectly moody accompaniment to Harris' writing, but if this is supposed to be a character we're familiar with from the narrative, I simply can't tell. I think the mystery is intentional; when Krycek was revealed in a Season 10 issue, it was done simply with a drawing. Editor Denton J. Tipton admitted in a letters column that he wanted readers to figure out on their own that it was Krycek, rather than spelling it out with words.
At any rate, in my next post, it's on to Season 11 proper. I'll no doubt get my answers there.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksSun, 24 Apr 2016 12:42:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/24/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-2015-Annual-and-XMas-Special‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW's 2014 Annual and X-Mas Specialhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/21/XFiles-flashback-2014-Annual-and-XMas-Special
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-annual-2014.jpg">
Resurrecting a tradition from the old Topps comics, <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">IDW's "X-Files" Season 10 comics</a> have also featured special issues alongside the regular series, starting with 2014's Annual (April) and X-Mas Special (December), both of which feature two stories. While Joe Harris, the writer of the main title, writes one story, he mainly gives other wordsmiths a chance to tell standalone yarns set during any era of the saga.
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Frank Spotnitz, who last contributed to the "X-Files"-verse in three issues of the Wildstorm comics, makes a welcome return on "The Priest" in the annual. Co-written by Gabe Rotter and Shannon Eric Denton, the tale – like Spotnitz's Wildstorm work – reads like storyboards that could be easily adapted into a first-rate episode. The art by Stuart Sayger is not my thing – although I adjusted to it – but I dug the story about a guy who still communicates with his wife despite being dead. Rather than a typical ghost story, we get the "ghost's" confused perspective, and clever deduction by Mulder, who theorizes that a guardian of the afterlife is trying to keep the man from communicating with his wife lest humanity have proof of the afterlife.
Hopefully, Spotnitz – who sat out the 2016 TV miniseries due to his commitment to "The Man in the High Castle" – will get to write "X-Files" TV scripts again. He hasn't lost the touch.
Dave Sim, who I know best from his guest turn on Issue 8 of the old Mirage "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comics, steps in for another very smart tale, "Talk to the Hand." Set during the 1990s, evidenced in part by the beautiful Scully likenesses by artist Andrew Currie, Sim wonderfully encapsulates a dream state where Scully must work out what she loves more: high school boyfriend Adam, or her FBI job. It's interesting to think about how major life choices can be made by our subconscious selves.
Harris' entry, "Season 10 Greetings," kicks off the X-Mas special, which resurrects the "X-Files' " relationship with Christmas. While there was only one Christmas episode in the series – the beloved Season 6 entry "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" – the very first "X-Files" comic (Topps Issue 1, "Don't Open Until X-Mas") also took place at Christmas.
Like "G-23" (Issues 19-20 of Season 10), this effort is somewhat weird and experimental, although not quite to that degree. Mulder sees aliens, but they keep wiping his mind, much like in the series' second episode, "Deep Throat." Meanwhile, for a more overtly comedic angle that almost borders on a dream state, Skinner is throwing a Christmas party. He gets sloshed while the Lone Gunmen try to take various pictures of people under the mistletoe with an old box camera. Doggett and Reyes appear just for the sake of appearing, nicely summing up their underuse by IDW so far (although it's better than ignoring them). I don't entirely know what to make of this story, but the jokes are timed well and it's nice to see the whole gang of "X-Files" heroes together.
Writer Karl Kesel revisits Special Agent Bing Ellinson and Special Employee Millie Ohio in "Merry Christmas, Comrade!," which he actually teased on the last page of "Year Zero," which came out just before this issue. This story squeezes into the timeline at Christmas 1946, after the denouement of "Year Zero" but before the epilogue. This is their first case on the regular X-Files beat – in the sense that they know it's an X-File before they arrive on the scene of a Detroit war munitions factory menaced by a gremlin.
Ellinson takes somewhat of a backseat here as Millie catches up with an ex-soldier named Hardin, whom she romanced when they were both stationed in Europe in World War II. Having a gremlin on an airplane is a classic use of the creature – before "gremlins" were re-popularized in the 1984 movie (also set at Christmas) -- and it may remind some readers of "Twilight Zone: The Movie." In another holiday touch, Ellinson dresses up as the creature Krampus (roughly, the anti-Santa) in order to scare and capture the gremlin.
When Ellinson gives Ohio a present – a lucky bracelet – it calls to mind Mulder's and Scully's present exchange in "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" and alludes to yet another relationship between FBI partners. Still, it's nice to see Bing and Millie again as the early X-Files become more fleshed out. In a nice continuity nod to Season 5's "Travelers," Ellinson notes that because Hardin is a suspected communist, "Dales and Michels would be my first choice" for the case, rather than he and Ohio.
In my next post, I'll take a look at the 2015 Annual and X-Mas Special.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksThu, 21 Apr 2016 23:59:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/21/XFiles-flashback-2014-Annual-and-XMas-Special‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW’s ‘Millennium’ miniseries (2015)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Millennium-miniseries-2015
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While "The X-Files" was spun off into novels as far back as 1994 and into comics in 1995, its sister series, <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Millennium" target="_blank">"Millennium"</a> (1996-99), didn't transition to another medium until 2015, 16 years after it left the airwaves. The fact that it's written by Joe Harris, who also meticulously pens the "X-Files" title, makes the five-issue "Millennium" series – a chronological tie-in with <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 10</a> -- about as good as it can be. But it has two things working against it that it can't quite overcome.
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First, the TV series is a bit of a narrative mess. It's often been said that each of the three seasons seems like a different show; the first was overseen by Chris Carter, the second by Glen Morgan and James Wong, and the third by Carter's hand-picked guys. Carter even admitted to not having watched all of Season 2 when he planned Season 3. Broadly speaking, the crux of "Millennium" is that Frank Black – a brooding Fox Mulder-type, plus visions but minus a sense of humor (except for occasional super-dark humor) – works with the Millennium Group to stop the coming apocalypse ... until he finds out that the group itself aims to bring about the apocalypse.
Harris resurrects the conflict in 2015, with the new wrinkle that Frank's daughter, Jordan, has now grown into a young woman and joined the Millennium Group – which still wants to recruit Frank, and which Frank still doesn't trust.
Oddly, "Millennium's" conflict is in another way rather straightforward. In the standalone episodes, Frank takes on serial killers or other examples of human evil. In the wider mythology, his nemesis is Lucy Butler (Sarah-Jane Redmond), who is literally the Devil, or "Legion," as she prefers to be called in this comic series. (At least, Frank thinks she's the Devil, not just an "ordinary" demon, and I trust his judgement in these matters.)
Second, "Millennium" is more driven by mood than "The X-Files" is. "The X-Files" can smoothly transfer to other media because it is story-driven enough. But "Millennium's" beauty comes from Mark Snow's music (I still think the theme song is the most gorgeous of any TV intro), Lance Henriksen's grim performance and the dark Vancouver-area cinematography befitting the dark themes and stories. The show marinates in the nature of evil, making a viewer dwell in the darkness with Frank, rather than ever coming to any strong conclusions – narrative or thematic.
Harris had brought Frank back into the "X-Files"/"Millennium" fold in Issue 17 of "X-Files" Season 10, basically so Frank and Mulder could cross paths again and say hi. This miniseries starts with Mulder – who shares the Issue 1 cover with Frank – in a courtroom arguing against the release of Monte Propps, a vintage "X-Files" villain who never actually appeared on the show. Mulder wrote a monograph on Propps that led to the serial killer's arrest in 1988 and made the agent a profiling legend within the FBI (until he squandered his good name by obsessing over the X-Files). Before they meet in person, Scully knows Mulder by reputation from the Propps case.
Artist Colin Lorimer and colorist Joana Lafuente ably mimic "Millennium's" mood in comic-book form, even though it's a near-impossible task for the reasons mentioned above. Harris' story has a disconnected feel that kind of works along those lines, too. Essentially, Propps is just one of a series of people Lucy possesses and dispatches until her showdown with Frank, Mulder and Jordan in Issue 5. That's a pretty tasty idea, and it makes me wonder if Lucy possessed Propps going all the way back to 1988.
Another tasty idea is the suggestion that the Millennium group planted bombs in the World Trade Center towers at the turn of Y2K that helped the buildings collapse in the 9/11 attacks 21 months later. While it's a brave concept, the fact that it isn't addressed after Issue 1 is a bit of an evasion by Harris.
Jordan comes onto the scene in Issue 3, and this is where the story would've gained a significant added punch if it were a TV series. Brittany Tiplady hasn't done much acting since playing the role of Jordan as a child, so it would be fascinating to see her return as a young adult. As it stands, I didn't totally grasp that this woman was Jordan, at least not visually. It doesn't help that Frank and Jordan are (relatively) happy when we last see them in 1999 – in the "X-Files" Season 7 episode "Millennium" -- and now they are estranged.
Even though this miniseries is largely just a reminder of the old plot points, it manages to dredge up enough story that it exits with more intriguing threads than when it entered: Specifically, that Jordan is now dealing with full-fledged visions of human-perpetrated horrors just like Frank did. But perhaps because Frank tried to shelter her from her powers for so long, she might not deal with it as well as Frank has. Throw in her involvement with the shifty Millennium Group, and Jordan becomes vulnerable to evil even as she ostensibly fights it. Also, it's not entirely clear how Jordan defeats Lucy. Does she absorb some of her powers? Does she absorb some of her evil? I'd pick up that continuing story – in comic or TV form.
Considering that it's a three-season TV series that's over a decade old, we should probably just be thrilled that we got the five issues of "Millennium" in 2015. Still, with Harris and Carter still overseeing "The X-Files" at IDW, and with Mulder and Frank and their investigations more closely intertwined than in the TV days, it's possible we could get even more "Millennium" (or at least appearances of Frank and Jordan in "The X-Files") somewhere down the road.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksWed, 20 Apr 2016 23:11:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Millennium-miniseries-2015‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW's ‘Year Zero’ miniseries (2014)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/14/XFiles-flashback-Year-Zero-2014
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The origin of the FBI's X-Files was somewhat convoluted in the TV series, and it becomes more convoluted in the five-issue miniseries <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">"X-Files: Year Zero"</a> (2014) -- but also more compelling. This second miniseries tying in with IDW's Season 10 comics is a dramatic step up from the uneven "Conspiracy."
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The TV series had two contradictory origins of the X-Files. First, in Season 1's "Shapes," Mulder investigates a case that continues from the "very first X-File, initiated by J. Edgar Hoover himself, in 1946." Second, the Season 5 episode "Travelers" suggests that FBI agent Arthur Dales was the first to delve into the X-Files, in 1952. (However, Arthur's brother – also named Arthur, a Roswell cop – knew an alien baseball player in 1947, as shown in Season 6's "The Unnatural." We also know from that episode that the brothers talked regularly. So perhaps the FBI's Arthur came across strange cases before the events of "Travelers.")
"Year Zero" clarifies that Dales was not the first agent to investigate X-Files. As Mulder notes in Issue 5: "I've met Arthur Dales – he thought he investigated the first X-Files, but he clearly didn't know about the 1940s cases. I doubt if many agents did."
So in this miniseries we get the definitive "first X-File," and it's not merely the backstory of "Shapes." The title "Year Zero" has multiple meanings: It's the origin of the casefiles themselves, and it also features a villain named Zero. Pointedly, this supernatural being goes by "Zero" in his interactions with Mulder and Scully in 2014, but went by "Xero" in his interactions with FBI agent Bing Ellinson and Special Employee Millie Ohio in 1946.
When Hoover assigns the duo to investigate odd cases – from a sub-basement office, perhaps the same one M&S will later use – Ellinson notes that "these weird cases we're looking into – they're all because of Mr. Xero. They're all X-Files." (This arguably contradicts "Travelers," where we learned that, in 1952, unsolved cases were filed under "U" by an FBI secretary until she ran out of room, at which point she used "X," as that drawer had extra space available.)
At any rate, "Year Zero" works largely because Ellinson and Ohio are likable leads. Ellinson has a bit of a temper and an interest in secret government experiments in New Mexico. For those reasons, he is being marginalized by his bosses. Ohio is a woman and is therefore being marginalized – see the "Special Employee" title. Neither is thrilled to be working with the other, yet they share the common need to demonstrate their worth to their bosses so they don't get fired. Bing is like a hardboiled detective and Millie reminds me of the lead from "Marvel's Agent Carter" with the way she's constantly having to prove that she can do a traditional man's job.
The "Shapes" tie-in is pretty straightforward, as a man turns into a Manitou in Montana, as per the werewolf-style mythology. The additional layer to the story is that Xero/Zero gives the FBI agents – in both the past and the present – tips about supernatural events (such as the Manitou) via intermediaries. His goal is ultimately sinister, as he wants to track down one of the intermediaries, who owes him something in exchange for making her immortal. Writer Karl Kesel does a nice job of making a reader uneasy about whether Xero is a playful or dangerous entity.
The art on "Year Zero" is effective. Greg Scott and Vic Malhotra share the art credit, with colors by Mat Lopes. My guess is that one of the artists did the past scenes and the other did the present-day scenes. The 1946 panels are drawn with solid lines, pastel colors and sparse backgrounds; the 2014 panels feature more shading and gloomy backgrounds. The contrast nicely evokes the nostalgia of the past much like "Travelers" and "The Unnatural" did with their lighting and color palette choices.
Occasionally, the idea of "The X-Files" going forward on TV without Mulder and Scully is bandied about. In 2002, the show could've continued with Doggett and Reyes, but Chris Carter instead opted to shut it down when ratings dropped below that of timeslot competitor "Alias." He felt that not enough people wanted a Doggett/Reyes series. The introduction of agents Einstein and Miller in the 2016 miniseries can't help but make me speculate about a regular series with those agents, with M&S popping in when David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are up for it.
But "Year Zero," with its strong leads and nostalgic setting, pitches what might be the best spinoff idea – one starring Ellinson and Ohio.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksThu, 14 Apr 2016 22:32:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/14/XFiles-flashback-Year-Zero-2014‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW's ‘Conspiracy’ miniseries (2014)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/9/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Conspiracy-miniseries-2014
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The "X-Files"/"30 Days of Night" miniseries from 2010-11 was a crossover that made sense: Both franchises logically occupied the same world. The <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">"X-Files: Conspiracy"</a> miniseries (2014) is noticeably more forced, as IDW attempted to pitch four of its other licensed franchises – "Ghostbusters," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Transformers" and "The Crow" – to "X-Files" fans in its first Season 10 side venture.
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The six-issue series does some things right. The framing story – featured in Issues 1 and 6 – is built on an intriguing sci-fi premise: The Lone Gunmen (recall that they are alive in the comics timeline, having faked their deaths in "Jump the Shark") receive a message from the future warning them about a rather gruesome viral outbreak. People essentially develop metal spears internally and are stabbed to death from the inside. The mysterious informants (revealed in the final issue to be the Gunmen themselves, along with Mulder and Scully) use new Higgs Boson-based technology at CERN to send the warning back in time, along with some leads.
Another good call is using the Gunmen as the main characters (although why the title isn't "The Lone Gunmen: Conspiracy," I'm not sure). By loosely tapping into the lighter tone of the "Lone Gunmen" TV series, the encounters with the Ghostbusters, Turtles, Transformers and The Crow play more smoothly than if Mulder and Scully were the main protagonists.
But there's no denying that the middle four issues are side trips, as the Gunmen glean just a bit more information on the way to the finish line, and the main goal is to try to hook "X-Files" readers on these other franchises. (You really could read just Issues 1 and 6 and get most of the story.) Of the four middle issues, I was most intrigued by "TMNT" (Issue 3); I'm a fan of the classic Eastman & Laird comics and some other incarnations of the Turtles. Although I haven't dived into IDW's version yet, I admit to being somewhat intrigued by the way it seems to blend aspects of E&L's work with aspects of the cartoons and Archie comics.
As the Gunmen come across the Turtles near the famous Northampton farm, Leonardo is recovering from being brainwashed by the Foot Clan, so obviously this issue ties in with a storyline from the proper "TMNT" series. Another fun twist is that Ronnie Strickland, the vampire kid from Season 5's "Bad Blood," pops up again; it's amusing, though, that Mulder immediately recognizes the connection – and recalls Strickland's name -- from a 16-year-old case, just with a brief description over the phone.
The "Crow" issue (5) works as a respectful introduction to the premise of that moody franchise, wherein a supernatural crow lets dead people live long enough to carry out an act of vengeance that provides closure. But the "Ghostbusters" (2) and "Transformers" issues (4) come off as shallow and silly. In the latter case, Langly banters with Bumblebee about how they are "ninja buddies."
The Gunmen decide not to publish anything about these encounters because, as Byers says in the "Transformers" issue, no one will believe it: "Mutated man-turtles? Ghost hunters? Time travel? I think even Mulder would have a hard time believing, and that's saying something." Lines like this – and while this is the worst example, there are others – show that the writers don't have a great grasp of "The X-Files." Mulder would most definitely believe in all these things; in fact, he had encountered all of them before. He himself has hunted ghosts at times, man-turtles aren't much removed from flukemen, and Mulder dealt with time travel in Season 4's "Synchrony." Gibson Praise's pseudo-time-travel ability to pull people out of the past into the present – as he does with Krycek -- also factors into Season 10, although admittedly Mulder doesn't know that at this point in the timeline.
Another oddity is that the Gunmen joke in the final issue about how James Bond should go by "Jimmy Bond." No doubt writer Paul Crilley (who also penned Issues 1 and 4, the "Transformers" issue) is riffing on the fact that the Gunmen's benefactor in the TV series was named Jimmy Bond. But it's strange that the trio doesn't directly reference this. The banter of the trio in "Conspiracy" isn't so off base to be distracting, but it's also clear that the writers aren't intimately familiar with these characters and how they interact.
(And come to think of it, it's strange that Jimmy doesn't appear in any of the comics. I suppose it's possible that the government funds the Lone Gunman newspaper as part of its deal with the trio, but even if that's the case, Jimmy should still be involved in their lives as he had become their friend. Yves would also be a welcome addition to the comics, although the writers would need to find a compelling use for her. But Jimmy should be hanging around as comic relief, if nothing else. It seems Jimmy and Yves suffered fates similar to Doggett and Reyes: The comics writers just don't have much use for them the way the TV shows did.)
As for the conclusion of "Conspiracy," it turns out that the virus was developed by a splinter group of the government/alien conspiracy that aimed to wipe out all humans. Or something like that. Even when it's trying to be relatively serious, "Conspiracy" still comes off as cartoony. It's nice that the Lone Gunmen get to be the stars of this six-issue miniseries, but compared to the TV series and the "Gunmen" one-shot from Dark Horse, "Conspiracy" is a weak entry.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksSat, 09 Apr 2016 23:36:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/4/9/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Conspiracy-miniseries-2014‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW’s Season 10 comics Issues 18-25 (2014-15)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/25/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1825-201415
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This final batch of <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">IDW's "X-Files" Season 10 comics</a> continues the slight downward trend since the series' beginning but provides a kinda, sorta satisfying wrap-up – and also a cliffhanger leading into Season 11, fitting with the TV series' approach. The final mytharc, "Elders" (Issues 21-25), has the epic feel of a mythology episode – a trick that writer Joe Harris is very good it achieving, as shown with "Believers" (1-5) and "Pilgrims" (11-15) before this. It suitably explains the powers of the Glasses Wearing Man, revealed in Issue 22 to be Gibson Praise, but doesn't tell us why he's doing the things he's doing.
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Put simply, Gibson – always drawn by Matthew Dow Smith in a shadow-drenched "Sin City" style emphasizing his glasses -- has such god-like powers that he might as well be a god. Throughout Season 10, he has been manipulating events both specific to our characters and to humanity worldwide. Mulder is targeted by the FBI, then the DOJ, then the AG in this final arc, all because a woman revealed that he once counseled her about her alien abduction. He wasn't authorized to use FBI funds to do this, so certainly a reprimand is in order. But when the entire justice system comes down on Mulder, it's a frightening reminder that when you're targeted by the government, you are toast. The downside is that we aren't privy to the specifics of how Gibson is doing this ("god-like powers" will suffice for now) or why he is doing this (he keeps assuring Scully that it was "the only way" to get Mulder safely out of the FBI, as he had used his super-mind to examine all possible futures).
As for world events, Harris briefly shows us that Gibson is the reason why Guantanamo Bay is still open. In the real world, Gitmo is opposed by both liberty-minded people who believe prisoners should not be held unless they are charged with a crime and put on trial, and by warmongers who believe terrorism-based prisoners should be executed rather than indefinitely detained. President Obama – the commander-in-chief, who presumably has the power to back up this promise -- promised to shut down Gitmo, but still has not done so eight years later, leaving the baffling question of "Why?" Harris effectively peppers in that real-world mystery by having Gibson use Gitmo as a base for his clone-growing operations and a source of hapless experimental subjects (along with the wider expanse of Cuba).
"Elders" crystalizes what an eagle-eyed reader might've already guessed: All of the Syndicate members in Season 10 are clones. They share "92 percent" of the genetic material of the original person. (That's an odd number: When one considers that chimps and humans share almost 99 percent of the same DNA, someone who is 92 percent the Cigarette-Smoking Man should not look and behave identically to the CSM. But we'll set that aside for now.) The alien-abduction victim whom Gibson brought back in Issue 21 to trigger the persecution of Mulder is also 92 percent the same. We can presume Gibson had access to the genetic material of everyone he "brought back" through his alliance with the aliens, specifically the shapeshifting Acolytes (introduced in Issue 1 but on the bench since Issue 18). Gibson's hack of the FBI's X-Files back in "Believers" then allowed him to program these clones with most of their original memories.
When Scully shoots Gibson in the head in Issue 25, and then he re-emerges as not just one clone but dozens of clones, it reveals an even greater level of power (as well as a lead-in to Season 11). Gibson's most notable god-like power, though, was introduced (and then set aside) back in "Pilgrims": He yanked Krycek out of a moment in the past, bringing him into the present. And he had done this several times. I think the ability to manipulate time might offer Harris an "out" if he wants to make Seasons 10 and 11 canonical with the 2016 TV miniseries. We'll find out if he tries this tactic when Season 11 concludes later this month.
"Elders" may not hold up as complete package of storytelling, but it is an enjoyable read because Harris nails the voices of all the characters. I can hear William B. Davis saying the Cigarette-Smoking Man's lines, and Don S. Williams delivering the First Elder's dialogue, and so forth.
As for the issues leading up to the final mytharc, I'm not so fond of them. "Monica & John" (18) is the worst issue of Season 10 – and this is coming from someone who loves Doggett and Reyes. We learn what happened to the agents, who disappeared back in "Believers": They were held in two nearby basements in South Dakota for 18 months by an Acolyte. Much like Chris Carter's use of Reyes in the TV miniseries – where she was inexplicably the CSM's nursemaid – "Monica & John" puts these former lead characters back into the series, which is a good thing, but does nothing with them that relates to their personalities or character growth, which is a bad thing. Both are more or less fine after escaping captivity, which is good I suppose, but also ridiculous; they should be traumatized beyond belief after 18 months of nothing but silence, darkness and three meals a day. We also don't know why the Acolyte was holding them; in retrospect, I suppose puppet-master Gibson Praise just wanted Doggett and Reyes out of the way.
"G-23" (19-20) no doubt has its proponents, but it's not my cup of tea. The art isn't the problem, as it's drawn by Tom Mandrake, who also drew the outstanding "30 Days of Night" crossover. But it's entirely a psychedelic episode, one of those stories where it's implied that you'll enjoy it more if you're smoking marijuana or dropping acid or something. In a nutshell, a government experiment with highly potent marijuana at Nevada's Area 51 backfired in the early days of the conspiracy. We see this story through Mulder's hallucinating mind – and Langly also imbues the weed, apparently because he likes getting high – and the punchline is that the super-weed had "aliens" in it. Among the wild moments is Mulder's vision of Scully as "Red," a cigarette-smoking, pantyhose-wearing femme fatale. Essentially, Harris is doing an off-kilter episode in the vein of Darin Morgan's work or Carter's "Post-Modern Prometheus" or "Bad Blood." I admire the effort to mix up the tone of Season 10, but it's just not my thing, especially as it comes on the heels of the return – and prompt return to the bench -- of Doggett and Reyes.
All told, though, Harris does an admirable job on Season 10, consistently maintaining the pacing, tone and character voices from the TV series, even if Gibson Praise's specific goals remain too much of a mystery in the end. In future flashback posts, I'll look at the spinoff miniseries and special issues associated with Season 10, and then I'll move into Season 11.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksFri, 25 Mar 2016 14:01:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/25/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1825-201415‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW’s Season 10 comics Issues 10-17 (2014)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/22/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1017-2014
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After a strong first nine issues, <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">IDW's "X-Files" Season 10 comics</a> hit a dip in quality from Issues 10-17 (2014). On my first read, this was the point where I started to sour a bit on Joe Harris' storytelling. On my second read, I realize this was mostly because of the one-month gap between issues. Reading them in one sitting allows the story to flow much better. Still, there is some dense stuff in this batch. As with the heyday of "The X-Files," your enjoyment will depend on whether you frustrate yourself by trying to understand every little plot point in the mythology, or whether you're content to grasp the big picture.
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On the surface, "More Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" (Issue 10) should be as juicy as Season 10's previous sequel-to-a-classic-episode, "Hosts" (6-7). While we do get to see Bill Mulder and Cassandra Spender in some of the flashbacks, the overall package is dodgy, largely because the present-day CSM is not the real CSM; he is an alien shapeshifter under the control of – as we learn in the final panel – the Glasses Wearing Man (as he came to be known on the letters page). In fact, the CSM is not merely one shapeshifter, he is an endless string of shapeshifters (as we find out at the end of Issue 15, "Pilgrims, Part 5") created, programmed and controlled by the GWM. (Granted, the fact that this isn't the real CSM makes the yarn a nice parallel to Season 4's "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man," which didn't tell strictly real stories from the villain's past.)
It helps on this re-read that I know the GWM is Gibson Praise, the chess prodigy with alien DNA who was last seen as a kid on the TV series. He is now grown up and using his alien-human-hybrid super-brain power to control these shapeshifters; if memory serves, his endgame is more or less to take over the world.
"Pilgrims" (11-15) is the next big mytharc, following the season-launching "Believers" (1-5). Mulder, Scully and Assistant Director Morales travel to Saudi Arabia to investigate a case that reintroduces staple elements from classics like Season 4's "Tunguska" and the first movie, "Fight the Future." Our heroes are menaced by various people under the control of the black oil (Earth's original alien settlers, as the movie told us). Scully is transported via alien spaceship from Saudi Arabia back to Washington, D.C., as Mulder records "missing time" (a central notion of UFOlogy that I have never totally grasped). Skinner holds Krycek (yes, Ratboy returns from the dead; more on that in a bit) in his apartment, like in "Tunguska," and Mulder is possessed by the black oil (again, like in "Tunguska"), putting Scully in yet another situation where she has to figure out "Mulder" is not Mulder – this happened a few times in the TV series, and as recently as "Believers," where a shapeshifter posed as her partner.
Scully is left with a pseudo-amnesia that always accompanies "X-Files" abductions – even unusually brief ones like this. Memory loss is a hard thing to portray in comics – writer Stefan Petrucha also had this problem in his arc that opened the Topps Comics run – because the writers can't lean on actors playing "confused."
Krycek is also confused about why he has been thrown into this story; the last thing he remembers is puking black oil out of his facial orifices in "Tunguska." Harris does an excellent job writing the shifty character made famous by Nicholas Lea; so often on the show, a viewer wanted to trust him even though we knew we shouldn't, similar to voters during election season. But in "Pilgrims," his return from the dead -- he was clearly gunned down by Skinner in Season 8's "Existence" -- is so bizarre that it makes sense to believe Krycek's confusion.
It turns out that the villain of this grand scheme (later revealed to be Gibson Praise) has the power to yank Krycek from right after his black-oil possession in 1996 and bring him into modern time to use as an agent. Or something like that. Krycek's return – on the heels of the CSM's "return" – smacks a bit too much of a "greatest hits" album, even with Harris capturing Ratboy's voice. And Praise's ability to pull people through time like that is arguably too incredible of a power to be plausible or compelling. Yes, "The X-Files" touched on time travel in the Season 4 standalone "Synchrony," but the mytharc is dense enough without throwing time-travel conundrums into the mix.
"Immaculate" (16-17) is the weakest Season 10 monster-of-the-month yarn up to this point, albeit one featuring a cool cameo. It starts with a "pre-credits" sequence in the finest tradition of "The X-Files," as a visibly pregnant woman named Joanie Cartwright enters an abortion clinic. Just as the doctor is about to begin the procedure, the receptionist realizes this same woman had an abortion mere months earlier; it's not a baby she's carrying, but rather a bomb. However, as the clinic goes kaboom, the woman walks away unharmed.
But "Immaculate" doesn't go anywhere from there; Harris doesn't delve deeply into abortion from either side of the issue (although one could argue the fact that Joanie is possessed by the Devil is a stark commentary on abortion). Everyone in this small North Carolina town seems possessed – calling to mind Season 2's "Die Hand Die Verletzt" and "Our Town" and several other "odd townsfolk" yarns – but in three different ways: One group follows Joanie, one group claws their eyes out (like in Season 5's "Chinga," where an evil doll makes them do it) and members of the third faction – the abortion protestors -- are redundantly shot to death AND scared to death by Joanie's faction.
"Millennium's" Frank Black makes his comic-book debut in Issue 17, which also marks his first appearance of this millennium (his prior appearance was in the "X-Files" Season 7 episode "Millennium," which aired in 1999). The psychic Black implies to Mulder than Joanie is possessed by the Devil (or possibly an incarnation of the Devil), but it's weird that he doesn't clearly spell this out to Mulder, who assures Frank that "When it comes to the paranormal, I'm ready to believe you. Ask around." Frank beats around the bush, presumably for the sake of maintaining the mystery, but it would've been more fun to hear Black and Mulder speak frankly about this case, something neither of them can do around most people. Sometimes the Frank-vs.-the-Devil stories (the Devil is Lucy Butler, played by Sarah-Jane Redmond) worked well on "Millennium" thanks to the show's deliciously dark mood, but there's not much depth or intrigue to this conflict in the comic pages.
Still, it is nice to see Frank Black return after a too-long absence (even with "The X-Files" TV revival, it seems unlikely Lance Henriksen will get to reprise his role). Issue 17 was somewhat of a teaser for a five-issue "Millennium" miniseries that followed in early 2015, and which I will review in a future flashback post.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksTue, 22 Mar 2016 23:27:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/22/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-1017-2014‘X-Files’ flashback: IDW’s Season 10 comics Issues 1-9 (2013-14)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-19-201314
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<a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/The_X-Files:_Season_10" target="_blank">IDW's "X-Files" Season 10 comics</a> mark the first time Chris Carter has a story credit on an "X-Files" comic – he co-wrote Issues 1-5, "Believers," with series helmer Joe Harris – but, ironically, IDW's series now seems less canonical than Topps' or Wildstorm's. Although neither Carter nor Harris has issued a statement about the canonicity of the series, it seems pretty obvious that this is what happened: When IDW's "X-Files" launched in 2013, it was intended to be canonical. Then, in 2016, Carter changed his mind when he relaunched "The X-Files" for TV, no doubt figuring that too much of the TV audience was unfamiliar with the comic to make the new episodes tie in with the comic.
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The final issue of Season 11 will be released later this month, and I suppose it could theoretically rectify the contradictions between the comic and TV event series, although Harris has his work cut out to pull that off. Then IDW will launch a new ongoing title that supposedly will fit with the new TV continuity. The irony of all this is that the comic – along with Kumail Nanjiani's "X-Files Files" podcast and a general public thirst for more "X-Files" – is part of what led to the new episodes. I'm not complaining, but it is kind of frustrating that Seasons 10 and 11 have been rendered non-canon, because the first thing I notice on my reread of Season 10 Issues 1-9 (2013-14) is that they are really good.
The most blatant continuity glitch is the time at which Mulder and Scully return to the FBI's X-Files division, as well as their relationship status when they do so. In the comic, they return to the X-Files in 2013, and in the TV show, they return to the X-Files in 2016; both stories feature elements that set the stories in real time. In the comic, M&S are a couple, still living together in their rural Virginia house from "I Want to Believe." In the TV show, they have split up, although they still care deeply about each other and work well together.
An additional possible continuity glitch is that Season 10, Issue 2 reveals that the Lone Gunmen faked their deaths – as portrayed in Season 9's "Jump the Shark" – with the help of the federal government. In "Babylon," the fifth episode of the six-episode event series – which, to confuse matters further, is now referred to as "Season 10" by many sources, including IMDB – Mulder hallucinates playing cards with the Lone Gunmen. While the suggestion is that he is seeing dead people, the sequence doesn't definitively say the Gunmen are dead. It gets weirder: In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Carter said "I didn't want to pretend they weren't dead but was looking for any way to bring them back." This is despite the fact that he co-wrote the comic story that revealed they faked their deaths!
So, in a nutshell: Carter changed his mind. The IDW comics were originally canonical, and now it seems they aren't. Basically, "X-Files" fans are in the same position as "Star Wars" fans; there are now two continuities: The one that used to be canonical, and the one that is currently canonical.
At any rate, whether canonical or not, these stories are worth a second look, so here goes:
Wildstorm's run ended in 2011 and IDW's started in 2013, meaning that 2012 is the only year between 2008 and today that featured no new "X-Files" stories. This is supremely ironic considering that Season 9 ended with the prophecy that alien colonization would begin on Dec. 22, 2012, the last day of the Mayan calendar. The TV event series vaguely told us that colonization did indeed "begin" in 2012, but not in a way that the populace noticed. In Season 10 Issue 3, Mulder tells the Cigarette-Smoking Man (later revealed to be an Acolyte alien shapeshifter who passes himself off as the CSM thanks to information gleaned from the Acolytes' hacking of the X-Files), "You told me when the aliens were going to invade and none of it came to pass!"
In addition to addressing the 2012 question, "Believers" immediately addresses the two major oversights from "I Want to Believe": The lack of continuation of the narrative about William, and the lack of mention of Doggett and Reyes. In "Believers," much like in the TV event series, Scully is haunted by wondering what happened to the son she put up for adoption. The arc also reveals that Doggett and Reyes still work for the FBI, albeit not as partners and not in the X-Files division, which has been closed since 2002. Doggett investigates a pipeline of magnetite, which the Syndicate (or its post-Syndicate equivalent) constructed in a circle around Yellowstone Park as a barrier to contain the Acolytes. Reyes checks in on William's adoptive parents in Wyoming and finds they have been murdered by the Acolytes. (Reyes' continued FBI employment isn't necessarily a contradiction with the TV event series, as we don't know the precise timeframe she was nursing the CSM back to health, having been blackmailed by him.)
In other nods to the second movie, the restless Mulder is writing (with a typewriter!) "I Want to Believe: A Memoir by Fox Mulder"; in the film, Scully suggested he write a book about his X-Files experiences as a balm for his restlessness. Also, Scully is still working at (presumably) the same children's hospital. For some reason, she and Mulder have changed their last name to "Blake," which was not the case in the film. It's not much of a protection from the Acolytes, at any rate.
One thread IDW does not continue from "I Want to Believe" is the question of whether Scully's cancer patient, Christian, survived his cutting-edge stem-cell treatment, or whether he died. That remains a mystery in both the comics and the TV series, which is odd because he should occupy an important place in Scully's heart along with William and Emily, her other lost children.
"Believers" plays very much like a sweeps-month mythology story, featuring the seeming hanging death of Skinner, the seeming return of the CSM, the seeming shooting of Mulder at the hands of Scully (and vice-versa!), M&S's near-reunion with their son, and the disappearances of Doggett and Reyes. It has a bit of a "greatest hits" feel. In Season 2's "Colony," Scully had to figure out which Mulder was real and which was the shapeshifter, and the Mulder-bodysnatching idea came up yet again in Season 4's "Small Potatoes" and Season 6's "Dreamland." And the CSM has, of course, returned from the dead many times.
It's somewhat surprising that "Believers" is such a blatant continuation of the mythology, putting to rest the notion that Season 9 put a bow on the mythology in any way, shape or form. Harris is saying that if "The X-Files" is going to continue, it should aggressively continue – and on this re-read, I'm in agreement. The TV event series also aggressively threw us back into mythology mode with its first episode.
In the subsequent issues, Harris goes solo, without the assistance of Carter, but these next four issues are even better. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. X" (Issue 8), like "Believers," features art by Michael Walsh, who has a sketchy style I don't like as much as the crisp, clear renderings from Topps, Wildstorm and other IDW artists. Still, I got used to it, and the B&W flashback scenes in Issue 8 are wonderfully moody, especially when the gun-toting schoolkids are rendered in red.
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. X" flashes back to 1987, when Mr. X covered up a school shooting that came about from a mind-control experiment botched by the Syndicate related to Purity Control (the Syndicate's plan to create alien-human hybrids). The current "Mr. X" is – like the phony CSM – an Acolyte shapeshifter armed with knowledge from the X-Files hack, which is kind of a hoary premise, but the flashback is wonderful, as it shows Mr. X interacting with the CSM and Deep Throat back in the day. Indeed, Deep Throat gives himself the unofficial code-name in this story after he and Mr. X have a showdown in front of the Washington Post building (where Watergate's Deep Throat made contact with reporters in the 1970s).
The fact that IDW delves so heavily into the mythology is the biggest difference from the Topps and Wildstorm comics. But the publisher doesn't abandon Monster of the Month yarns, and indeed, "Hosts" (Issues 6-7) struck me as the best "X-Files" comic story ever on my original read. While I was no doubt enamored simply by the concept of revisiting the famous half-human, half-flukeworm sewer monster from Season 2's "The Host," the sequel is certainly no hack job. As new Deputy Director Morales asks M&S to button up old cases, we learn the complete backstory of the Flukeman, which dates back to the Chernobyl incident. But more importantly, Harris – with artists Elena Casagrande and Silvia Califano delivering crisp yet moody art more to my liking – comes up with delicious creep-outs. Scully unfreezes the half-Flukeman from the original case, and it begins to regenerate its upper half! During the show's original run, around Season 7 or so, Carter said he'd like to do more MOTW sequels once the mythology was wrapped up. That never happened in earnest; if it had, "Hosts" is the type of episode I would've liked to have seen.
"Chitter" (Issue 9) is not a sequel, but it certainly calls to mind Season 3's "War of the Coprophages" in being cockroach-centric. It ends with a creepy reveal of a basement full of skeletonized missing persons in a small Pennsylvania town, and it shows that Harris can effectively cram a standalone yarn into one issue, like Topps used to do. He makes no overt connection to the "Coprophages" cockroaches (which were actually government-created spy devices), but it's interesting to note that these cockroaches do control the minds of people who are "in despair and pain," and that Scully feels light-headed around their influence. Scully's depression and malaise over giving up William for adoption were also played up in "I Want to Believe" and the TV event series.
Whether the TV event series or IDW did the post-"I Want to Believe" story "better" is open to debate (I like both of them). It's undeniable, though, that IDW got there first, and Harris does an admirable job launching Season 10. But can he keep it up? More on that in future flashback posts.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksSun, 20 Mar 2016 21:00:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/20/XFiles-flashback-IDWs-Season-10-comics-Issues-19-201314‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘X-Files’/‘30 Days of Night’ comics (2010-11)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/14/XFiles-flashback-XFiles30-Days-of-Night-comics-201011
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As a fan delves deeper into his favorite TV series, he'll inevitably start to wander down the rabbit hole of crossovers. In addition to the obvious connections to "Millennium" and "The Lone Gunmen," "The X-Files" is arguably also part of the same universe as "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Law & Order: SVU" due to Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer) appearing in Season 5's "Unusual Suspects." And the Season 2 episode "Red Museum" loosely links with "Picket Fences." Mulder and Scully also appeared on "The Simpsons."
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But – aside from fellow Carter-verse shows "Millennium" and "The Lone Gunmen" – the most effective "X-Files" crossover is the <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">"X-Files"/"30 Days of Night" six-issue comic series</a> from Wildstorm and IDW in 2010-11. It's co-written by "30 Days of Night" creator Steve Niles and – as it's set during the 1990s, when M&S work for the FBI – it serves as a prequel to the proper "30 Days of Night" series. Whether a fan wants to link it with "30 Days of Night" comics or movie franchise is another rabbit hole of discussion.
Regardless, this is a richly realized series that slathers the pages with almost as much storytelling intrigue as gore-encrusted killings. As with Season 1's "Ice" and Topps comics Issues 8-9, "Silent Cities of the Mind," the action is set in the snow-covered Alaskan wilderness. Artist Tom Mandrake effectively captures the isolation of this locale, starting with a trucker who comes upon a graveyard of crashed trucks and a grisly tableau that would make Hannibal Lecter proud: A dozen headless corpses are frozen into a totem display, with the heads arranged at the base.
"The X-Files" loosely tackled vampires twice during the TV run – in Season 2's "3," one of the series' most loathed episodes, and Season 5's "Bad Blood," one of the most beloved episodes. But "30 Days of Night" is a comparatively serious and detailed take on vampire lore. Mulder suspects from the get-go that vampires are to blame for the killings – although, similar to "The Walking Dead" not using the word "zombie," he never actually says "vampire."
Thankfully, it's not a case of going through the motions as Niles' and Adam Jones' yarn unspools. Rather, we learn about the specifics of the "30 Days of Night" mythology, complete with a limbless former sea captain who had been cursed with eternal life (or unlife, as it were) by the creatures; native Inuit who know they must fight off the beasts until sunlight returns; and Russian agents stationed just on the other side of the boundary line who are hunting the monsters.
Similar to "The Strain," although with a bit less ancient mythology, we see that the traditional rules loosely apply – sunlight is bad for the creatures, and a bullet through the head isn't enough to kill one. But these are not sexy Dracula-style vampires. Although they talk to each other in their own language and have a culture of sorts, they attack with viciousness and psychological cruelty, as the opening tableau suggests.
Mandrake delivers evocative images like an icebreaker ship caught in the ice for decades, the FBI's makeshift encampment, and the small town itself: Wainwright, a real-life town of about 500 people not too far (in Alaska terms) from Barrow, where the primary "30 Days of Night" saga takes place. Furthering the geography lesson, the Russians have a base on their Big Diomede Island, which neighbors the U.S. island of Little Diomede.
Mulder's conflict with Federal Agent Robert Daniel French, who Mulder denigrates with the name "Frenchy" in payback for the man "riding (him) since Quantico" for his "spooky" theories, is a bit clichéd -- both in the sense of having a human villain amid a horror yarn and in the sense of Mulder being taunted with "Spooky." On the plus side, I love that the Russian base features agents who are fans of M&S's work, as they head up the Russian equivalent of the X-Files. (It's too bad Mulder couldn't team up with those Russian allies during his adventures in Season 4's "Tunguska.") I also like how Skinner stands up for Mulder and Scully when French whines about their involvement.
In the end, I almost want to watch the 2007 "30 Days of Night" movie to experience the "sequel" to this "X-Files" story (although the absence of M&S would no doubt be a letdown). At any rate, in the often highly commercialized realm of comic-book crossovers, "X-Files"/"30 Days of Night" is one of the good ones, as it makes logical sense and respectfully showcases both franchises.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksMon, 14 Mar 2016 22:47:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/14/XFiles-flashback-XFiles30-Days-of-Night-comics-201011‘X-Files’ flashback: Wildstorm Comics Issues 0-6 (2008-09)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/9/XFiles-flashback-Wildstorm-Comics-Issues-06-200809
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Kicking off the second phase of the "X-Files" franchise, creator Chris Carter and fellow executive producer Frank Spotnitz were interested in checking in on Mulder and Scully's relationship and job statuses in the 2008 movie "I Want to Believe." However, they weren't interested in continuing the mythology at that time, much to the consternation of many fans. The seven issues from <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Wildstorm Comics</a> in the movie's wake didn't continue the story from Season 9 or from "I Want to Believe," but rather told new stories set during the timeframe of the original series.
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The upside is that whereas the showrunners' involvement with the Topps comics was almost nonexistent, Carter and Spotnitz were involved with the Wildstorm comics, at least at the outset. In an interview in the back of Issue 0 (September 2008), Carter says " 'The X-Files' has proven to be such a flexible concept ... the comic book is an opportunity to expand on that." The undercurrent of that statement is that this is a canonical series, and the fact that Spotnitz writes Issues 0, 1 and 2 cinches that theory. Spotnitz adds that these tales are set roughly between Seasons 2 and 5.
Right off the bat, the most notable difference from the Topps series is the consistent moody darkness of the art by Brian Denham (pencils and inks) and Kelsey Shannon and Carlos Badilla (colors). Topps' work was sometimes dark, but just as often done in the traditional four-color style. Like the Topps artists, Denham captures Mulder's and Scully's likenesses beautifully.
In Issue 0 (a new story in the old timeframe, despite the fact that the cover confusingly features the poster art from "I Want to Believe"), Spotnitz starts with a tale of a "missing woman (who) turns up after 17 years ... not having aged a day," as Mulder puts it. The agent makes no reference to the episode "Invocation" – which, granted, took place after this, during the Doggett days of Season 8 – nor to "Thin Air" (Topps Issue 17), about pilots who turn up unaged after a half-century. Ultimately, this tale ends up being extremely similar to the "Buffy" Season 2 episode "The Dark Age," about a demon who jumps between different host bodies.
Spotnitz does a bang-up job on Issues 1-2 (January-February 2009), a pseudo-mythology two-parter. Perhaps feeling some regret over the Lone Gunmen's deaths in Season 9, Spotnitz heavily features the trio as Mulder's helpers here. The maguffin is a flash drive that contains no information but is covered with a deadly chemical that can be absorbed through the skin. In a delicious bit of dialogue, Langly at one point tells Scully "We don't talk in front of The Man," referring to Skinner. It's a reminder that the Gunmen and Skinner didn't cross paths too often before his appearance in the "Gunmen" TV series (although they did team up to assist Mulder in "Fight the Future").
Spotnitz closes the story with a nicely pointed ending: Mulder succeeds in testifying before Congress about the deadly chemical, but rather than Congressmen rejecting this latest product of the military-industrial complex, they only become more enthusiastic about adding it to the military's war arsenal.
For whatever reason, Spotnitz dropped out of the series and Marv Wolfman took over for Issues 3-4. (Issue 4 claims this story takes place in 2009, but this is clearly a mistake, as – for one thing -- M&S work for the FBI, and there are no references to the events of the 2008 movie.) As is sometimes the case with writers who are new to the saga, Wolfman has a tendency to overstate the believer-skeptic dynamic rather than just telling the story.
It's a pretty good one, though, about a Chinese business mogul who seems to be a serial killer except that he has airtight alibis for all the killings. In classic "X-Files" fashion, the explanation is revealed somewhat offhandedly – completely identical human beings were created via an ancient "ceremony of simultaneously impregnation." I like the way Wolfman taps into Chinese cultural lore, something that was also done with creepy effectiveness in the Season 3 episode "Hell Money."
Doug Moench closes out the short-lived Wildstorm series with Issues 5-6, which reminded me a lot of the "Classic Star Wars" comics that were pasted together from newspaper strips. This is because of Moench's conceits of 1) having Mulder narrate his explorations of caves beneath the South Dakota badlands to Scully on a tape recorder, and 2) having all the characters regularly say the names of the people they are speaking to.
Denham's portrayal of the underground caverns adds a spooky vibe, but the story is the most standard of the Wildstorm batch. Also, the characters are the most off-point here. For example, Mulder is relatively calm despite being surrounded by fire, something that made him freeze because of a phobia back in Season 1's "Fire." Granted, subsequent episodes didn't do a great job of remembering Mulder's extreme fear of fire, but these issues ring particularly false.
In mid-2009, it seemed like "The X-Files" had petered out again. But a year later, Wildstorm still held the license, and the company made good use of it in a crossover with "30 Days of Night." More on that in my next "X-Files" flashback.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksWed, 09 Mar 2016 23:58:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/9/XFiles-flashback-Wildstorm-Comics-Issues-06-200809‘X-Files’ flashback: Topps Comics specials (1995-97) and Dark Horse ‘Lone Gunmen’ one-shot (2001)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/2/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-specials-199597-and-Dark-Horse-Lone-Gunmen-oneshot-2001
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The 41 regular issues of the <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Topps "X-Files" comics</a> featured many Monster of the Month standalones, plus a handful of issues that felt like mythology episodes (mostly during the Stefan Petrucha run) and one Scully character piece ("N.D.E."). One notably missing style of "X-Files" story is the comedic piece. But the special issues – two annuals, three digests, one graphic novel and three weirdly numbered issues (Issue -1, Issue -2 and Issue ½), plus Dark Horse's "Lone Gunmen" one-shot – rectified this oversight, as several of these stories are whimsical in tone.
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Those that don't aim for chuckles tend to be deeper meditations than are found in the regular series. Essentially, the greater page count allows these stories to breathe more, making this batch of issues something that shouldn't be overlooked by fans.
My favorite of the bunch is "Hallow Eve" (Annual 1, 1995) by Petrucha. Rather than the Halloween story suggested by the title, it chronicles an archaeologist's supposed uncovering of the bones of "Eve," the original human. A ghost story incorporates a campus urban legend, a medium a la "The Conjuring," a "Scooby Doo" ending (which I'm not so fond of), a tragic villain and a touching reappearance of the ghost of Scully's dad.
Petrucha's "Dead to the World" (Digest 2, 1996) is about an eccentric and cocky villain who has figured out how to live forever by killing people and ingesting their adrenal glands. It's ironic to note that he has Scully in his clutches but does not realize that according to one interpretation of "X-Files" lore (see the episodes "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "Tithonus"), she is destined to live forever herself.
"AfterFlight" (1997) rounds out a trilogy of long-form masterpieces by Petrucha. As a "graphic novel," this is the longest single-issue story published by Topps (slightly longer than an annual, which itself is double the length of a standard 24-page issue). As he touches upon the tragic nature of Alzheimer's, the author also tells a sweet and fun story about an old man who aims to get his father's ancient flying machine – which may, of course, have alien influence behind it -- up and running.
"Big Foot, Warm Heart" (Digest 1, 1995) is a comparative misfire from Petrucha. Rather than a true Sasquatch, the title character is just a mountain gorilla – a rare, but certainly not unheard of, animal. This tale is a direct riff on "The Most Dangerous Game," as an eccentric island-dwelling rich guy hunts rare animals and ultimately – of course – Mulder and Scully. I get a sense that Petrucha was somewhat rushed on this entry.
John Rozum's stories tend to be more straightforward than Petrucha's, but they're not without merit. "E.L.F.s" (Annual 2, 1996) is a character study of a doctor who believes his brain is being controlled by radio waves. With the right actor, this could've played as a classic tragi-comic episode. That tone works in comic form, too, as I chuckled at the way the doctor wallpapers his house with tinfoil (nicely rendered by Gordon Purcell) and insists on wearing tinfoil underwear.
Rozum's "Scape Goats" (Digest 3, 1996) is similar to "AfterFlight" in that a fairly standard family murder yarn is hijacked and given a spiritual dimension by the presence of an alien. In this case, the alien is known locally in Puerto Rico as a "chupacabras" (the "s" is not a pluralization). The similarly named El Chupacabra was also the monster in Season 4's "El Mundo Gira," which aired a few months after this digest was published.
While the graphic novel, annuals and digests are longer than standard comics, the three weirdly numbered issues are shorter than regular issues but still fun reads. Petrucha's "Tiptoe through the Tulpa" (Issue ½, a Wizard special, 1996) is the best of these, chronicling a woman who manipulates the apparition of her comatose son. Petrucha's "Trick of the Light" (Issue -1, 1996) and "The Pit" (the first part of Issue -2, 1996) are throwaway entries; there just aren't enough pages to do justice to an artist/kidnapper or a haunted mining tunnel. However, Rozum's "The Silent Sword" – making up the second part of Issue -2 – is a fun companion piece to "E.L.F.s," as it examines whether insanity comes from the inside or from outside forces.
One last comic from the period of "The X-Files' " original TV run bears mentioning: "The Lone Gunmen" one-shot, "Patriots" (2001, Dark Horse). It's penned by Jane Espenson – known for her work in the Joss Whedon-verse and the Amy Sherman-Palladino-verse -- in her only foray into the Chris Carter-verse. Helped by Paul Lee's art, Espenson nails the tone of the "X-Files" spinoff: Mildly slapsticky with bizarre touches of sci-fi, even as the trio (along with Jimmy and Yves) explores serious conspiracies against a naïve public. In an ironic twist that calls to mind the "Angel" episode "The Ring," where Angel rescues a bunch of evil demons from other evil-doers, the Gunmen save the U.S. government from a takeover by racist militants.
(I'm extra fond of this issue because my copy is signed by Langly actor Dean Haglund, who I met in the mid-2000s in Minnesota when he was on an improv comedy tour. I did a phone interview with him in advance of the tour stop, and – unable to resist the opportunity to ask all my fan-centric questions – probably kept him on the phone obnoxiously long. Later, he said his wife wondered if he was being interviewed by the New York Times. But, of course, a big media outlet would be more likely to conduct a two-minute interview with an ex-Lone Gunman than a two-hour session.)
"Patriots" is accompanied by an essay by Bob Harris about the threats to liberty and economic stability posed by a theoretical worldwide government, the U.S. surveillance state, corporatization and FEMA camps. It has been widely noted that "The X-Files" still felt very relevant when it returned for its recent six-episode miniseries, and if they were likewise resurrected, Byers, Langly and Frohike would certainly be kept busy tracking modern-day wrongdoings by people in power.
(That brings up the question of whether the Gunmen truly have been resurrected in the official canon. IDW's Season 10 comic – considered to be canonical until the TV show returned -- revealed that the trio faked their deaths in order to continue their work even further off the grid. While some assume the miniseries contradicted this when Mulder had visions of the Gunmen in a hallucination sequence, the miniseries didn't explicitly say the Gunmen were dead, or that Mulder thought they were dead.)
This wraps up my look at the original Topps (and one Dark Horse) comics from the first heyday of "The X-Files." (Completists will note that Topps also put out adaptations of nine Season One episodes and a four-issue adaptation of the novel "Ground Zero," plus an illustrated novel version of the first movie.) In future posts, I'll look at the Wildstorm Comics that popped up in conjunction with the 2008 movie "I Want to Believe," and the current IDW comics, which are part of the more robust "X-Files" resurgence of 2013 to present.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksWed, 02 Mar 2016 23:35:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/3/2/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-specials-199597-and-Dark-Horse-Lone-Gunmen-oneshot-2001‘X-Files’ flashback: Topps Comics Issues 37-41 (1998)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/29/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-3741-1998
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In a mystery worthy of an X-File itself, the <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Topps "X-Files" comics series</a> abruptly ended in September 1998 with Issue 41, in the wake of the popular feature film, as Topps closed the comics wing of the company. Even the editor wasn't privy to this bombshell, as there's no mention of it in the last issue's letters column.
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The five issues from 1998 are the typical solid standalones we've come to expect from the title – four from John Rozum and one from editor Dwight Jon Zimmerman. His "Devil's Advocate" (Issue 40) puts him among a quartet to have penned an "X-Files" comic in the regular run, along with Rozum (22 issues), Stefan Petrucha (16 issues) and Kevin J. Anderson (two issues).
Although the mainstream entertainment media – and certainly the mainstream media in general – has an unwritten rule that tie-in materials aren't to be acknowledged, it's a testament to how huge "The X-Files" was in the summer of '98 that Issue 40 was mentioned in my hometown paper, the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, because it featured a story set in Devils Lake, N.D.
And it's a juicy one, as Zimmerman imagines the military is hiding nuclear weapons under the overflowing Devils Lake, thus breaking an international treaty. He notes that North Dakota – also featured in the Season 4 episode "Terma," where Krycek gets locked in a nuclear silo -- would be the world's fourth-largest nuclear power if it seceded from the union. As is often the case, Mulder and Scully know what's going on, but they leave the site without tangible proof, and thus the government is protected from its own snooping agents. The images of the dead trees in the lake are spot-on, as is the idea that the Army's work on dams to protect homes would distract the populace from the nuclear cache.
Rozum's most compelling entry from this batch is "Cam Rahn Bay" (38), in which weaponized dolphins from the Vietnam War are accidentally triggered by cellphone signals. While the things that humans do to other humans during war is horrifying, there's a particularly unique horror about the US Navy's Swimmer Nullification Program, which outfitted dolphins with spears to kill enemy soldiers and trained them to plant bombs on enemy vessels. I like that Mulder draws a parallel to the killer ravens from "Skybuster" (34).
"Scum of the Earth" (39) is another environmentally themed story, making it clear that this is a pet interest of Rozum's – although to his credit, he never gets preachy. In a takeoff on "Flubber," he invents "blobber," a bouncy play-dough-style toy that had to be recalled when it gave kids rashes. But the company had a hard time neatly disposing of the substance, and decades later it has taken on a life of its own in the Florida lowlands, killing sewer workers and people who are innocently taking a shower. It's like if "The Host" (from Season 2) had been an ooze rather than a creature. In another neat nod to continuity, the mad scientist villain from "Surrounded" (30-31) returns.
The other two issues are straight-ahead monster yarns. "Severed" (41) – appropriately titled considering that it marked the abrupt end of the series – is a werewolf tale with an "It Follows" spin: A werewolf can be cured if the werewolf that bit him is killed. And similar to "Buffy's" werewolf lore, established earlier in 1998, this werewolf has some control over his shapeshifting; it's not entirely dependent on lunar phases. Considering Rozum's generally good attention to continuity, it's surprising that neither Mulder nor Scully reference Season 1's "Shapes," which tread very close to being a werewolf story.
Issue 37, which for some reason is untitled, hews closely to Season 1's "The Jersey Devil." Whereas that classic episode explored the myth of feral humans living in the New Jersey woods, this issue taps into the Goatman myth of the Maryland woods. Although Scully theorizes that these are genetically abnormal humans, the mythology holds that they are a separate, sentient species that has managed to live on in the woods despite the rise of the human race. In a clever final-panel twist, the goatman aims not to save the last female of his species but rather to kill her so that no more of his race have to live in a world increasingly dominated by humans.
There are no doubt a few Rozum scripts out there that were axed due to the series' end. (Topps' other ongoing "X-Files" series, the adaptations of Season One episodes, left "The Jersey Devil" and "Ghost in the Machine" unreleased.) One of the unreleased yarns probably had something to do with crop circles, judging from an inaccurate synopsis of Issue 39 on an advertising page at the back of the comics; a few times over the course of the series, the order of the stories was changed after descriptions went out to advertisers. It would be cool if these unfinished Rozum stories could be uncovered someday by current license-holder IDW. I give a slight edge to the imaginative Petrucha among Topps "X-Files" scribes, but the reliable Rozum is runs a close second.
While this marks the end of the regular Topps series, I'll be back with a look at the specials, digests and annuals in an upcoming post.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksMon, 29 Feb 2016 17:06:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/29/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-3741-1998‘X-Files’ flashback: Topps Comics Issues 25-36 (1997)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/28/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-2536-1997
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-comic-27.jpg">
In 1997, "The X-Files" was at the height of its popularity, and excitement among the <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Topps "X-Files" Comics</a> creators and fans is evidenced in the letters pages, which feature tidbits about awards, ratings and other accolades. With John Rozum's stories, though, there's a sense of playing it safe, as the series had long since decided to let Chris Carter's show take the lead while the comics provided supplemental adventures. In 1997, the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5 featured Scully's cancer and Mulder's supposed suicide, but the comics mainly featured standalone monster-of-the-week (or -month, as it were) adventures.
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There are two notable exceptions, though, where Rozum (who, starting with Issue 30, is accompanied by the new – and just as competent as their predecessors -- penciling/inking team of Alex Saviuk and Rick Magyar) pushes the envelope. "Remote Control" (Issues 27-29) is a sweeping mythology three-parter about remote viewers who formerly worked for the US government and are now privately employed. One of them works for Libyan terrorists, who are using his skills to hijack a US military truck, which may or may not contain a flying saucer. For whatever reason, the comic series to this point hadn't made use of Deep Throat (who, granted, was killed off before the comics launched), Mr. X or Marita Covarrubius. Oddly, Mulder occasionally receives information from shadowy sources that neither he nor the reader knows – a dark-haired woman and a young black man were these sources on two previous occasions.
In "Remote Control," the comics step up their game by having Mulder consult with his one higher-up ally from the TV show, Senator Matheson. The senator is portrayed in shadows, but the letters column later confirms that this is Matheson. Unique to the comic, Matheson has an underling named Crockett who is sort of a good-guy equivalent of Krycek; he helps Mulder out of a jam, but won't allow him to see the alien craft, because then – as the cliché goes – he'd have to kill him. Crockett also has access to a utility belt based on alien technology that can make him invisible or project a bulletproof force field. In a tasty bit of accidental continuity, the recent "X-Files" TV miniseries showed that alien crafts can become invisible.
The other meaty story from this batch is "N.D.E." (35-36), which features a personal connection for Scully. The opening black-and-white panels show a flashback to the night before her meeting with Blevins (in 1992, the caption says, but didn't she meet Mulder and join the X-Files team in '93?). She's at a bar with her friends from the academy – who reference the fact that she dated Jack Willis, a tie-in to Season 1's "Lazarus" -- one of whom is going on an undercover mission. Fast-forward to present day and Mulder and Scully are investigating an X-File associated with the mob boss who had killed Scully's friend. "N.D.E." also nicely incorporates Scully's religious beliefs, as the mob boss believes from the visions of his near-death experience that he is doomed to hell. The reader also sees that Scully's friend has gone to heaven – and so does the mob boss in the final panel – making this a daringly blunt statement for an "X-Files" yarn.
The other '97 issues are somewhat formulaic: Rozum shows us a bizarre death(s), gives us a historical or legendary or scientific theory that could explain it, and then sees the story through to its end, with M&S not able to definitely close the case but with readers getting a hint as to what happened. These issues are fun reads, though, and could play as episodes of the TV series, albeit lesser entries.
"Be Prepared" (25-26) is similar to Season 3's "Quagmire" in that Mulder surmises a supernatural answer (a Wendigo killing campers in the snowy Montana woods), but the actual answer is from the real world (a bear driven mad by a trap clamped to its leg). But the final panel shows a Wendigo, just as the final shot of "Quagmire" shows Big Blue.
This is the first of two yarns where Rozum gets almost-but-not-quite heavy-handed with an environmental message. The other is the best stand-alone issue of this batch: "Skybuster" (34), which continues the trend of strong "X-Files" stories set in Alaska. It opens with a classic image of a victim being carried off by a flock of ravens, which is either being driven mad by local atmospheric research tests or acting in defense of Mother Earth against humans. (Of course, as Homer Simpson would point out, a flock of ravens is known as a "murder," and frankly it's kind of surprising that Mulder doesn't make this observation too.) The idea of Earth being a living organism upon which humans are a parasite is intriguing, even if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
"Surrounded" (30-31) is a bit clunky. Rozum does a timely riff on the early '90s events at Ruby Ridge and Waco where the US government killed citizens trying to live off the grid, and the story gains relevance again in 2016, especially as it is set in Oregon, site of the standoff between the government and protestors who believe it has too much control over Western lands. The downside of "Surrounded" is that Rozum doesn't make it clear why this remote house is under siege by the FBI – it's suggested that a resident scientist has published some writings that catch the feds' attention, but it's a bit vague. The upside is that the idea of killer dust mites is brilliant, and it plays better in comics than it could on TV. (The skinned victims presage the 1999 novel "Skin").
"Crop Duster" (32) is about a man who sees gremlins, reminiscent of "Twilight Zone: The Movie." And rounding out this batch, "Soma" (33) chronicles widowed Indian women who seem to spontaneously combust while their surroundings remain untouched (again, we get a parallel to a novel, in this case "Ground Zero"). Rozum gets creative with historical spiritual beliefs, as "Soma" is based on a ritual whereby a widow must burn herself alive along with her husband's corpse so they may enjoy the afterlife together.
"The X-Files" comic might not have been quite as good as the parent show in 1997, but it certainly does not embarrass itself under the steady guidance of Rozum and the artists. The title did the yeoman's work of tiding fans over between episodes.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksSun, 28 Feb 2016 22:23:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/28/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-2536-1997‘X-Files’ flashback: Topps Comics Issues 13-24 (1996)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/26/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-1324-1996
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-17.jpg">
The first dozen issues of the <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Topps "X-Files" Comics</a> featured Stefan Petrucha's conspirators-within-the-conspiracy, the Aquarius group. But at the same time, the TV show's mythology was becoming more complicated. Perhaps in response, the Topps writers – Petrucha in Issues 13-16, John Rozum in 17-19 and 22-24 and Kevin J. Anderson in 20-21 -- decided to tone down the comics' mythology and focus on stand-alone stories in 1996 (which corresponded with the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4 on TV).
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The last mention related to the Aquarius mythology comes early in this batch when Mulder references the Neola, Kan., UFO crash (as explored back in Issue 2). Still, in his final four issues, Petrucha does feature UFOs (a.k.a. "fallen angels," a term from the Season 1 episode "Fallen Angel") in three of them. He doesn't directly tie his stories into the mythology, but he does close out "Home of the Brave" (15-16) with a military man telling Mulder and Scully "This was a need-to-know operation, agents, and you don't need to know this." His soldiers secure the scene of the sighting of the UFO, which Scully thinks could be "an experimental jet."
Petrucha's final three issues are thematically heavy-handed. "Falling" (14) is a "Lord of the Flies" riff wherein a kid – who reminds me of the boy born without a soul in the "Angel" Season 1 episode "I've Got You Under My Skin" – kills his friends and nearly kills a burn-scarred Mulder, who he believes is an alien. The final panel showing soldiers suggests that this boy learned his behavior from adult examples. "Home of the Brave" then follows up with horribly clichéd survivalists who come across a UFO.
But "One Player Only" (13) shows how a clichéd topic – in this case, the idea that people who play (or program) video games can become detached from reality and commit real violence – can be given a fresh spin. Rather than a computer gaining human-style sentience (as explored in Season 1's "Ghost in the Machine" and Season 7's "First Person Shooter," and most famously in "2001: A Space Odyssey"), here a man's brain is taken over by the computer.
When Petrucha moved on to other projects, Rozum took over and the quality of the writing remained fairly high. Likewise, the art by Gordon Purcell is an even match for that of Charles Adlard (who isn't quite done with "The X-Files," although Purcell handles Rozum's lead-off issue). Purcell's likenesses are more picture-perfect, but the crispness sacrifices the mood slightly.
"Thin Air" (17) is a meaty debut from Rozum, about a World War II pilot who disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle and reappears unaged a half-century later (the "reappearing unaged" idea was later explored in Season 8's "Invocation"). In a rare nod to the mythology from Rozum, the Cigarette-Smoking Man appears on the final panel in an unknown location with all of the missing pilots. As with a lot of "X-Files" yarns – especially as the series went forward -- we don't get a clear solution to this mystery, but Mulder's theory is a good one: He thinks the conspirators released the pilot to the public along with a purposely shoddy cover-up. That way, any future people who claim to have reappeared from the past won't be believed. (The idea that the alien mythology is a smokescreen to distract Mulder would later be famously explored in the "Gethsemane" trilogy that bridged Seasons 4 and 5. Of course, that "smokescreen" turned out to be a smokescreen – there really was an alien-government conspiracy.)
The two-parter "Night Lights" (18-19), on the other hand, is a clunker. Mulder, Scully and a scientist theorize endlessly about ball lightning even as we the readers have already figured out that, yes, a sentient ball of lighting did indeed murder a group of scientists.
Rozum more effectively plays out the mystery in his last three issues of '96. "The Kanashibari" (22), a rare case that brings the agents to Hawaii, touches upon the myth of an incubus- or succubus-style ghost that literally scares people to death. The grisly "Donor" (23) finds an organ donor coming back from the dead to take back his organs. This is one of those "X-Files" that veers completely off the track of making any kind of sense, but it's still entertaining. And "Silver Lining" (24) is a "Picture of Dorian Gray" riff, with the mirror in the lining of a trenchcoat for some reason.
Considering how good his first two "X-Files" novels ("Ground Zero" and "Ruins") were, I had high hopes for Anderson's "Family Portrait" (20-21), but like "Night Lights," the answer to the mystery is obvious from the beginning: A weird camera doesn't just capture people's images, but also a piece of their essence, thus aging (and ultimately killing) them. Both "Family Portrait" and "Silver Lining" call to mind Season 2's "Dod Kalm," wherein Mulder and Scully prematurely age, although only in "Silver Lining" do the agents make reference to that previous case.
It's inevitable that as a franchise grows, there will be more repeats of story ideas. But through two years of the comic title, there's no sense of burnout, despite a few issues that misfire. Rozum isn't as much of a meticulous researcher as Petrucha, but he enthusiastically explores sci-fi and paranormal concepts. While he resists connections to the wider mythology, he's still willing to put the agents through their paces with yarns that could be storyboards for monster-of-the-week TV episodes that never came to be.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksFri, 26 Feb 2016 00:27:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/26/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-1324-1996‘X-Files’ flashback: Topps Comics Issues 1-12 (1995)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/20/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-112-1995
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"The X-Files" has only produced six original novels and one short-story collection to date, but it has enjoyed a more robust life in the realm of comics, starting with a 41-issue (and plenty of specials) run with <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Comics" target="_blank">Topps Comics</a> from 1995-98. At first blush, this is odd, because it seems like a show dependent on mood and nuances would play better in books than comics. But as Topps' Issues 1-12 (1995) demonstrate, Chris Carter's program translates better to the four-color art form, at least under the guidance of writer Stefan Petrucha.
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On his "X-Files Files" podcast, Kumail Nanjiani noted that he has been reading the Topps comics (as recently reprinted by IDW) and found them to be a fascinating alternate timeline, with a different conspiracy than is found on the series proper. This is a fair assessment, but I'm the type who likes to fit all stories in a franchise into one continuity if possible. Certainly, it's safe to say that Petrucha didn't feel he was creating an alternate "X-Files." He references events from the show regularly – Mulder accesses memories of his sister's abduction and Mrs. Scully reminds her amnesiac daughter about her father's death a year earlier in Season 1's "Beyond the Sea." (These 12 issues take place in real time, parallel to the end of Season 2 and the start of Season 3.)
By the end of these dozen issues, the implication is clear that Petrucha's sinister cabal (or "inner government," as he often calls it) – known as Aquarius -- is a subgroup of the TV show's Syndicate. Aquarius -- led by General Schadenfreude and featuring agents known as Blue, Black, Grey and so forth, like in "Reservoir Dogs" – is more overtly aggressive than the Syndicate proper, showing up at nearly every one of the cases Mulder and Scully investigate. Aquarius often wants to acquire the same artifact Mulder is after, and the group has no problem with the idea of killing the agents.
In Issues 4-6 (the "Firebird" trilogy – "Khobka's Lament," "Crescit Eundo" and "A Brief Authority"), the Aquarius agents are particularly ubiquitous, which raises the question of how they can likewise remain so secret. A liberal policy of killing people who learn about them – or using memory-erasing gas, as in the Kansas UFO incident -- could explain some of it, but the problem with big conspiracies is you need both a large group and a loyal group; as such, Aquarius has less verisimilitude than the wider Syndicate.
Despite the slight misstep of having Aquarius be too in-your-face, these comics are better than I remember, and more consistently good than IDW's current run (although I'll give those another chance on a re-read, too). Petrucha is a rabid researcher who provides a works cited list on each issue's letters page. His artifacts are suitably compelling, starting with the Fatima Prophecy in Issue 1 ("Don't Open Until X-Mas"), which is sort of a Pandora's Box – it features answers to life's mysteries so profound that supposedly no human is prepared to read it. In a scene that serves as a tidy metaphor for "The X-Files" as a whole, Mulder has his hands on the parchment on the final panel, only to be surrounded by gun-toting Aquarius members, who take it from him.
The ultimate artifact of the opening 12 issues is a crystal skull (like in the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie) that perhaps allows communication with an alien race that perhaps served as mentors to the Aztecs. I found the denouement in Issue 12 ("Nightmare of History," wrapping up the "Feelings of Unreality" trilogy) confusing, but on the other hand, I loved the opening sequence wherein Mulder takes down the conspirators in a court of law. It builds up to the revelation of his key exhibit, "the body of an alien-human hybrid!" It's all a dream, but Petrucha and artist Charles Adlard earn the trickery with their (in retrospect) unlikely touches such as the Cigarette-Smoking Man puffing away at the defendants' table and the Lone Gunmen being seated in the audience. The revelation is the ultimate clue that it's all a dream, as the comics hadn't explored alien-human hybrids like the parent show had.
I had remembered that a lot of the Topps Comics stories felt truncated compared to the show, but that's not the case, at least not in this 1995 batch. Sometimes, Petrucha fits a fully formed story into one issue (Issue 1, for example); other times it takes more issues. Issues 2 and 3, "A Dismembrance of Things Past" and "A Little Dream of Me," feel like a mythology two-parter wherein M&S visit a Kansas town that was essentially a second Roswell and end up with their memories partially wiped. Generally, one issue feels like one TV episode in these Topps comics, a formula that can't be relied upon with the new IDW comics, where each issue generally contains less story.
The comics arguably get darker than the TV series ever did in Issues 8 and 9 ("Silent Cities of the Mind, Parts 1 and 2"), about a cannibal who acquires the knowledge of the people he eats. Petrucha's ability to get creative with history is in fine form here, as he imagines that the Aztecs came across the land bridge from Asia, but didn't go directly to Mexico. Instead, some of them settled in Alaska. Along with Season 1's "Ice" and Wildstorm's "X-Files"/"30 Days of Night" crossover, the Last Frontier is a reliably foreboding setting for a great X-File.
In addition to being daring with his set-pieces (an abandoned ancient underground city in Alaska, for example), Petrucha – whose work is accented by Adlard, who draws excellent Mulder and Scully likenesses without sacrificing the mood – dares to put the characters through their paces. Issue 7 ("Trepanning Opera") is particularly tasty, as it chronicles a rogue FBI agent who believes he can see the future through a "third eye" in the middle of his forehead. Tapping into Philip K. Dickian ideas about the nature of reality, the story suggests that although it seems Scully survives at the end, she "may only be imagining that (she) survived." The "Scanner Darkly"-style yarn becomes extra intriguing given the TV show's controversial but fascinating mythology element that Scully might be destined to live forever (as per "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "Tithonus").
Whether the Topps comics are truly part of the "X-Files" mythos or merely a side trip of "what ifs?" is a fair question, and I suspect most fans would say they are not part of the true canon. Nonetheless, they are undeniably intriguing yarns, and at this point in my re-read, I recommend them to fans of the show.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksSat, 20 Feb 2016 00:59:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/20/XFiles-flashback-Topps-Comics-Issues-112-1995‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Skin’ (1999)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/10/XFiles-flashback-Skin-1999
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The "X-Files" six-book series wraps up with its best work, Ben Mezrich's <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Skin" target="_blank">"Skin"</a> (1999). It's a much more layered novel than those from Charles Grant and Kevin J. Anderson, featuring a medical mystery right up Scully's alley that morphs into a supernatural mystery right up Mulder's alley. Both agents are in fine form, and "Skin" – like Anderson's "Ground Zero" and "Ruins" – takes advantage of the "unlimited budget" of the medium to take Mulder and Scully deep into the jungles of Thailand. (Spoilers follow.)
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While I was not surprised by any of the goings-on in four of the first five "X-Files" books (the only exception being "Goblins"), "Skin" is refreshingly complex – almost to the point of being confusing, but not quite. A mild-mannered professor receives a skin transplant and goes on a violent spree through New York. When Mulder and Scully, along with local law enforcement, stop him, they backtrack through the skin-transplant process and uncover a cutting-edge medical corporation. They ultimately track the mystery back to the Vietnam War, and to the other side of the globe.
The creepiness of the medical procedure – where victims of horrific burns are kept alive – calls to mind the second movie, "I Want to Believe," which delves into equally bizarre experiments in search of immortality. "Skin" features a human villain who gets sexual thrills from killing, and it's the most graphic of the "X-Files" books, featuring not only brain-dead experimental subjects whose skin has been burned off by napalm, but also fresh victims who are skinned. The earliest "X-Files" books were almost young-adult-oriented adaptations of some episodes, and Grant's and Anderson's books were a step up from that, but "Skin" is definitely an adult novel. It's not quite as good as, say, a Preston-Child novel, but it comes closer than any other "X-Files" book.
It probably wouldn't hold up to scrutiny from a reader with medical knowledge, but Mezrich provides verisimilitude to his material about skin transplants and the idea of a virus being transmitted. His real strengths, though, are locations and characters. He evocatively takes us through a subway-tunnel chase that calls to mind Season 8's "Medusa," and then has Mulder and Scully go to Thailand, where they investigate walled-off basements, jungles and ultimately a cave with a secret medical facility carved into it. In addition to the creepy killer – whom the narrator calls "the Amerasian" as per his American and Asian heritage, a term that never really caught on – Mezrich also gives us a brash female NYC detective and other big personalities along the way.
Although Grant and Anderson delivered serviceable versions of the leads, the agents are in particularly fine form under Mezrich's pen. I can hear Mulder's sardonic deliveries and Scully's bemused replies. None of the six books delves too much into the humorous side of "The X-Files," but if these books were TV scripts, David Duchovny would find the most to play with in "Skin's" version of Mulder.
It's interesting to note that the medical-genius villains of "Skin" are ultimately trying to create super soldiers, and Mulder finds compelling evidence that the Defense Department is funding their efforts. In Seasons 8 and 9, the Shadow Government began to focus its attention on creating super soldiers, and in Season 2's "Sleepless," we learned that the US government dabbled in removing soldiers' need for sleep. Any connection between "Skin" and the parent show is no doubt coincidental, but if a fan really wanted to, they could perhaps tie it all together.
"Skin" turned out to be the last original "X-Files" novel, and the last original work of prose fiction until 2015's short-story collection "Trust No One," from IDW. The Harper Entertainment book line no doubt ended because of the declining popularity of the show around the same time. It's too bad, because the quality of the series was on a generally upward trend, concluding with its best and most mature entry.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumWed, 10 Feb 2016 22:08:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/10/XFiles-flashback-Skin-1999‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Antibodies’ (1997)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/6/XFiles-flashback-Antibodies-1997
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Kevin J. Anderson's trio of "X-Files" books ends on a weak note with <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Antibodies" target="_blank">"Antibodies"</a> (1997). Despite having a core story that would make for a good monster-of-the-week episode, the narrative is thin, padded and sloppily structured. There's enough decent stuff to make it worth reading for die-hard fans, but it's clearly a step down from "Ground Zero" and "Ruins." (Spoilers follow.)
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Anderson tackles a sci-fi theme that was cutting edge at the time: nanotechnology. Genius scientist David Kennessy, of DyMar Laboratory in Oregon, perfects nanobots that he injects into his young son, Jody, curing his cancer. But adding dark undertones to this happy outcome are Jeremy Dorman, who injects himself with an older, unstable version of the nanobots to escape a fire at the lab that kills David; and Syndicate operative Adam Lentz, who aims to secure or destroy the technology.
For a deeper -- and frankly, more entertaining -- exploration of nanotechnology, check out Michael Crichton's "Prey" (2002). "Antibodies" treats the subject in cartoony fashion. (Granted, the "X-Files" episode about nanobots, Season 6's "S.R. 819," also uses them as a mere plot device.) While Jody is completely cured, Dorman is a pain-wracked, mucus-covered blob who calls to mind Clayface from the "Batman" franchise. He could've been a sympathetic villain, but he's both tiresome – it seems like the entire back half of the 268-page paperback finds him begging other characters for a sample of Jody's blood so he can cure himself (which is a shaky proposition anyway, without a functioning lab) – and in fact evil, as we learn he was collaborating with Lentz, who then double-crossed him.
Anderson does come up with some scenes that would've had great shock value on the screen, like when Dorman shoots the Kennessys' dog, Vader, to see if the nanotechnology injection will cure the canine. But the author just doesn't have the scientific passion or knowledge to sustain his – or our – interest in the subject for the whole page count.
One positive note about "Antibodies" is that it syncs up with the TV show better than previous "X-Files" books did. In Season 4 (specifically in the famous post-Super Bowl episode "Leonard Betts"), which wrapped up before this book came out, Scully learns she has cancer. As such, she feels a particularly deep sense of protectiveness toward Jody. It's similar to how she bonds with her would-be daughter Emily in Season 5's "Christmas Carol"/"Emily," and with a young cancer patient in "I Want to Believe." (Oddly, the author doesn't have Scully thinking about whether the nanotech could cure her. Through all three books, Anderson is gun-shy about getting into Mulder's and Scully's heads, perhaps fearing that he would contradict Chris Carter's vision.)
Additionally, we learn in the closing pages that Lentz is working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who sees a cancer cure as a crucial playing card in his power game – if the Syndicate can't have this miracle cure, he wants to make sure no one can. (Again, the author misses a chance to relate this case to the Cancer Man personally; although the CSM's cancer wasn't revealed at this point, we can assume that lung cancer would be a concern for someone who smokes non-stop.) In "Ruins," Anderson hinted that the Syndicate had sent a covert military group to destroy a buried alien spaceship, but he didn't say so outright. In "Antibodies," he is willing to do so. Lentz, for his part, is somewhat of a replacement for Krycek, who had parted ways with the CSM by this point in the narrative.
It seems like Anderson wrote "Antibodies" more quickly than his previous two books. Not only is it obvious where the story is going, but it takes forever to get to the end. Entire sequences repeat themselves: Vader springs on Dorman to save Jody twice; and the dog makes a "shocking" recovery thanks to the nanobots no less than four times! It may be surprising to the characters, but not to us readers, as we are privy to the secret of the nanotech from the early going.
There is also a timing glitch. Mulder and an Oregon sheriff come upon a deceased trucker who was victim of Dorman's plague. Then we cut to Lentz, back in Virginia, learning of the incident and deciding to fly out to Oregon. Then Lentz visits the scene. The time stamp says a few hours have passed, allowing for Lentz's travels. But the sheriff notes that he had been at the scene for an hour, contradicting both the time stamp and the fact that Lentz flew out to the site.
This narrative glitch points to the fact that "Antibodies" was more of a rush job – both in the writing stage and the copy-editing stage -- than the author's first two "X-Files" books. While the concept of nanotech is worthy of the "X-Files" treatment, Anderson wasn't invested enough in it to create a meaty novel.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumSat, 06 Feb 2016 23:32:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/6/XFiles-flashback-Antibodies-1997‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Ruins’ (1996)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/3/XFiles-flashback-Ruins-1996
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Just as Kevin J. Anderson's "Ground Zero" was a step up from Charles Grant's books, Anderson's <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Ruins" target="_blank">"Ruins"</a> (1996) is a step up from "Ground Zero." Unlike his first book, I didn't know precisely where the story was going this time around, and that made it a more enjoyable read. (Spoilers follow.)
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Once again, Anderson gives us "X-Files" on steroids. Rather than mere investigators who don't get their suits rumpled, Mulder and Scully are full-on adventurers, enduring a multi-day trek through the jungles of Quintana Roo. As their quest begins in the tourist town of Cancun, Scully notes that this case sure beats a remote outpost in Alaska ("Ice") or a chicken-processing plant in Arkansas ("Our Town"). Later, she longs for Alaska or Arkansas.
The FBI agents are on this rare out-of-country adventure as legal attaches to Mexico as they search for a team of missing UC-San Diego archeology students. "Ruins" is one of the rare "X-Files" yarns to take place outside the U.S. The others are sweeps-week episodes such as "End Game" or "Tunguska"; and the first blockbuster movie, which took the agents to Antarctica. The standalone episode "Dod Kalm," set in the North Atlantic, also comes to mind.
Anderson understands that since books have an unlimited "budget," he might as well come up with a big story. Indeed, the climactic scene is reminiscent of "Fight the Future," which would hit theaters two years later. I haven't heard that Chris Carter and company cribbed from "Ruins," but if they did, I wouldn't be surprised. In the movie, Mulder rescues Scully from a suspended animation pod – and she's covered with goo – aboard an alien craft, which then takes off. In "Ruins," Mulder rescues archeologist Cassandra Rubicon from a gooey suspended-animation field, which the aliens use for long journeys across the stars.
Another ship comes along and unleashes its energy beams – I picture "Patient X"/"The Red and the Black" or the movie "Independence Day." It doesn't use the beams to abduct or kill anyone, but rather to excavate the ship that had Mayan pyramids – the ancient city of Xitaclan -- built atop it. Then it essentially tows that ship out into the stars. As with the movie, Mulder sees everything, but Scully does not. She's in her camping tent during the book's scene, and Cassandra is also temporarily blinded from her ordeal. (In the book, Scully actually does see a feathered serpent in the jungle along with Mulder, but by the time she writes up her report, she has rationalized it as an uncatalogued terrestrial species.)
Anderson peppers "Ruins" with lots of juicy mysteries and good payoffs. The discovery of the corpses of Cassandra's fellow archeologists in a sacrificial well is deliciously creepy stuff, as is Scully's task of fetching the bodies in order to perform autopsies. The author also teases the idea of the Mayans' skills with mathematics and science coming from alien teachings, and – although he couldn't have known it at the time – the introduction of the Mayans into "X-Files" mythology ties in with the date of alien colonization being Dec. 21, 2012, the last day of the Mayan calendar.
Anderson also teases the idea that the Syndicate sent a covert U.S. military team to destroy Xitaclan on the grounds of it being an enemy military base. (The covert team is like a hammer that sees everything as a nail; the soldiers don't ask questions, they just carry out their mission.) This ties in with the notion that the Syndicate is split into those who want to fight the alien colonists and those who want to appease them.
As he did in "Ground Zero," the author creates big and broad supporting characters, from the agents' guide, Aguilar, who is like a slick used-car salesman, to Cassandra's father Vladamir, who is an endless fount of architectural knowledge and tales. Anderson plays it safe with Mulder and Scully, as this book doesn't feature substantial revelations such as "Ground Zero's" reveal that Scully briefly attended Cal-Berkeley and has a particular dislike of nuclear weapons.
One nice moment finds Mulder telling Scully that he appreciates her skeptical but fair analysis of his theories (p. 181). It's tame compared to the fan-favorite Conversation on the Rock scene from Season 3's "Quagmire," which came out just before this book's release, where Scully mildly attacks Mulder's obsessions. If you want deep character development of Mulder and Scully, you won't find it in "Ruins," but that's to be expected from a tie-in novel.
While "Ruins" is a rock-solid "X-Files" book, it suffers in comparison to Scott Smith's "The Ruins" (2006), which features a similar rescue plot and is also set in the Yucatan, and Douglas Preston's "The Codex" (2004), also about jungle adventures and Mayan artifacts, although that one is set in Honduras. But Smith's effort is flat-out my favorite horror adventure novel – and Smith spends years crafting his novels, whereas Anderson cranks them out pulp-style – and Preston is one of my favorite authors overall, so I'll forgive Anderson for not achieving quite the same level. As an "X-Files" tie-in novel, though, "Ruins" is a decent page-turner.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumWed, 03 Feb 2016 14:14:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/2/3/XFiles-flashback-Ruins-1996‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Ground Zero’ (1995)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/28/XFiles-flashback-Ground-Zero-1995
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After two mediocre novels from Charles Grant, the "X-Files" book series turns things around in a big way with <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Ground_Zero" target="_blank">"Ground Zero"</a> (1995). Remarkably, this book is by Kevin J. Anderson, who around the same time was writing four "Star Wars" novels (the "Jedi Academy Trilogy" and "Darksaber") that haven't aged nearly as well. But for whatever reason, the author understands "The X-Files" whereas he didn't quite grasp "Star Wars." (Spoilers follow.)
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"Ground Zero," which would become so well-liked by fans that Topps Comics did a four-issue adaptation, is a meatier novel than Grant's works. The paperback is 292 pages, and Anderson gives a damning critique of the U.S. nuclear weapons program through the years. The vengeance-seeking villain is Ryan Kamida, who was the lone survivor of a U.S. nuclear test that wiped out a whole civilization on Enika Atoll in the Fifties. Although this is a fictional story about a made-up island, the U.S. government really did relocate the population of Bikini Atoll for the sake of a nuclear test. And, of course, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well documented.
Some readers found it controversial that Anderson uses Scully as a lens through which nuclear weapons are explored. We learn in "Ground Zero" that Scully attended Cal-Berkeley in her freshman year of college and got involved with an anti-nuke protest group, something that led to heated arguments with her military dad. Until this story, even Mulder didn't know she attended Cal. While that seems like a big piece of backstory to be revealed in a book rather than the TV series proper, it hasn't been contradicted, so I'll consider it to be canon until Chris Carter says otherwise.
More anti-nuke views come from Miriel Bremen, a former nuclear research scientist turned professional protester. She's an example of who Scully could've become, and she challenges a reader to ask if Scully chose the right path. As Miriel notes, Scully works for the same government that is conducting the Bright Anvil test – again, on Enika Atoll – so why should she trust her? Mulder runs into the same awkward question from an alien abductee in the first episode of the 2016 miniseries. Mulder and Scully investigate the very government they work for. As we've seen, they learn a lot of things through their FBI jobs, but whether they can do anything about it is another matter.
Indeed, in "Ground Zero," they observe the Bright Anvil test – and the supernatural explosion that goes with it, caused by Kamida's vengeful, ghostly relatives – but can't do anything to stop it. And, as is often the case, Skinner declines to take the agents' report seriously, as he is no doubt answering to his off-screen (or off-page) bosses.
Another point of view comes from gruff nuke tester Bear Dooley, who argues that he is not morally responsible for what the military might do with the bombs he helps create. He says everyone has their area of expertise, and his expertise is not military strategy. It's amusing that Mulder and Scully exchange "amazed" looks when Bear ends a rant with "You have to trust the government. They know what's best for us" (page 246). More often, people who distrust the government are portrayed as extremists, so it's a refreshing change.
Although a much better book overall, "Ground Zero" has a similar problem to Grant's "Whirlwind" in that the description of every death is similar. The victim (always someone involved with the nuclear weapons program) receives a packet of ash, they feel a hot wind and they are roasted in a contained nuclear blast. Except that one pair of victims – missileers in a control bunker – DON'T receive a packet of ash. That wrinkle held my interest, but the revelation is weak. It turns out that Kamida's ghost relatives don't need the ash as a way to find the enemies after all; it's a way for Kamida to guide them to their targets, but it isn't essential.
Another oddity is that Miriel recounts the story of the USS Indianapolis as part of her diatribe against nuclear weapons, as that ship was involved in the delivery of the Hiroshima bomb. Most readers will think of Quint's famous USS Indianapolis monologue from "Jaws," so it's odd that Anderson would invite a comparison he can't possibly win.
Embracing the unlimited budget of his imagination, Anderson plays out "Ground Zero" on a bigger stage than most standalone episodes of the show. Mulder and Scully follow the case from D.C. to the Bay Area to New Mexico, then back to the Bay Area, then to Maryland, then back to California, then to Hawaii, then to the island where the test takes place. (And all this travel money is spent for the government to investigate – and exonerate – itself. I'll try not to think about that too hard.)
One weak spot of "Ground Zero" is that after a while Anderson fails to surprise a reader; this trait is also found in his "Star Wars" entries. He makes up for it a bit with strong descriptions of the climactic typhoon and nuclear blast, but there's still a sense of "Get to the end already." Still, the buildup is enjoyable, and after the first two "X-Files" books, it's refreshing to get a novel with the layered theme of nuclear warfare and a surprising slice of backstory for Scully. Anderson proves that "The X-Files" can work well in a medium other than TV.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumThu, 28 Jan 2016 23:49:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/28/XFiles-flashback-Ground-Zero-1995‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Whirlwind’ (1995)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/26/XFiles-flashback-Whirlwind-1995
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Just as "The X-Files" took a couple seasons to figure out its identity, Charles Grant gets a better handle on the material in his second original novel, <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Whirlwind" target="_blank">"Whirlwind"</a> (1995). But while the book has fewer departures from the canon than were found in "Goblins," it's a weaker book overall. The New Mexico desert setting is evocative, and I can picture Mulder and Scully on this adventure, but the mystery doesn't pop, as it's obvious from the title what the culprit is: Mini-tornadoes that tear people to bits. (Spoilers follow.)
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By revealing the "monster" right up front, "Whirlwind" isn't much different from some "X-Files" episodes. But while the descriptions of the violence are suitably gruesome, it also gets old after the fifth or sixth time the author attempts to build suspense by describing dust devils gradually building up steam. Maybe it would've played better with visual effects in a TV episode, but probably not. Grant even reveals – more or less – who is behind the deadly storms right up front: Elders from an isolated Indian tribe, the Konochine.
In "Whirlwind," Grant plays things safe with this franchise that was growing from cult hit to mainstream phenomenon. In his first book, "Goblins," he introduced a corrupt temporary assistant director named Douglas, who plants a corrupt agent on Mulder and Scully's team. In this book, the author abandons that thread; Skinner simply assigns this case to Mulder and Scully. Grant also resists giving the agents connections to so many characters; Mulder notes that he is slightly familiar with their law enforcement liaison, Red Garson, but that's about it.
Continuing to make up for the imbalance in the TV series, Grant again has Scully make significant contributions to solving of the case rather than merely dogging Mulder. She doesn't understand the science behind the whirlwinds, but she uses good cop work to conclude that the whirlwinds are indeed killing people.
The author effectively takes the reader to New Mexico in July, where the heat affects the agents' very thought processes, and he peppers in monsoons and nighttime chilliness. The setting is reminiscent of Season 9's "John Doe," when Doggett wanders around Mexico, and several other episodes that take place in the Southwest. It's also similar to Kevin J. Anderson's "Statues," from the 2015 short-story collection "Trust No One." In both yarns, a desert-dwelling artist sells works to the public through an intermediary, and in both cases, the art is the key to solving the mystery. In exploring the darker side of a Native American subculture, "Whirlwind" contrasts with the Season 2 finale (which conveniently aired around the same time as this book's release), where Mulder finds an ally in Navajo code talker Albert Hosteen.
However, being a fan of Douglas Preston's novels, which deliciously portray the vastness of the Southwest, I found "Whirlwind" comparatively shallow. And disappointingly, "Whirlwind's" best mystery – how did the Konochine build dwellings on top of a mesa that has no trail or tunnels to the top? – never factors into the story.
"Whirlwind" is a cleaner story than "Goblins," but it has fewer hooks. It can be read in a couple sittings, and it won't dampen your enthusiasm for "The X-Files," but you'll quickly forget about this particular case.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumTue, 26 Jan 2016 00:03:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/26/XFiles-flashback-Whirlwind-1995First episode impressions: ‘The X-Files’ miniserieshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/25/First-episode-impressions-The-XFiles-miniseries
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In 2002, I watched "The X-Files" series finale with a couple of friends at a friend's apartment. Obligatorily, we watched it with no lights on. I had been keeping up with the series, and was generally an apologist for it even though I didn't pretend to understand the details of the alien colonization/government conspiracy mythology. My two friends had stopped watching the show years earlier, but felt they should watch the finale for old times' sake and see how it wrapped up.
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Like most viewers, we were unimpressed with the conclusion; in my rewatching project, I still didn't like the two-part finale ("The Truth"), ranking those episodes at No. 16-17 of the 20-episode final season. But at least it put a bow on things: The Cigarette-Smoking Man was dead (again ... but this time in an unambiguous explosion) and we were told the colonization would begin in 2012, perhaps setting the stage for another movie. But in 2002, "The X-Files" was closed.
After a couple of brief relaunches – a mostly disliked 2008 standalone film ("I Want to Believe") that reaffirmed Mulder and Scully's love and a 2013 Season 10 IDW comic that found Chris Carter plotting the first arc and making sure it fit with canon -- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4370492/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">"The X-Files"</a> returned to TV on Sunday for the first of a six-episode miniseries (it continues over the next five Mondays on Fox). A return to the small screen – and the fact that people are excited about it -- would've seemed miraculous to those three friends in the darkened apartment watching the series wither and die. But it's less miraculous in an era where "Star Wars: Episode VII" exists and where "Twin Peaks" is shooting new episodes.
The first episode back, "My Struggle," might remind fickle types why they lost interest 14 years ago. Or it might spark their interest anew. Writer-director Carter repackages the old mythology as if it's something new, but he's just restating the old themes. I imagine the fan base will be split on whether it feels fresh enough; I'm on the fence myself.
A lot of "My Struggle" is a listing of tropes. We meet a girl, Sveta, who has been abducted several times; she's the latest take on Cassandra Spender. The Cigarette-Smoking Man – who appears in the final scene – is a major player, as yet again, the fact of his death means nothing on this show. (All snark aside, the image of an assistant helping the CSM smoke through the hole in his neck is deliciously villainous.) A laconic monologue by Mulder opens the show, recapping the events up through the closing of the X-Files in 2002 (and ignoring the '08 movie, because nothing much happened there, and the IDW comics, which switched from canon to non-canon when this miniseries came about).
Aside from a quickly dismissed red herring about how the aliens may have been a government cover story (something teased and refuted once before, in Season 4), "My Struggle" clearly lays out that the shadow government (the old Syndicate's bosses?) is in the midst of a push to shape the world as it sees fit. The baddies are more aggressive than in the '90s: We see a flying saucer blow up Sveta's car "Independence Day"-style. Mulder and "Truth Squad" TV host Tad O'Malley (Joel McHale) specifically describe the post-9/11 world, from the Patriot Act to the NDAA to the FEMA camps to police militarization to the endless wars.
At one point, Skinner (Mitch Pileggi, who joins David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in the vintage-style opening credits) – still an FBI assistant director -- tells Mulder that things have only gotten weirder since the X-Files were closed. However, hearing Mulder and O'Malley outline the way the world has changed doesn't make things weirder, it makes things clearer. Rather than a shadowy and shifting conflict, the battle lines are now clearly drawn.
While the 2008 movie and IDW's Season 10 and 11 (so far) failed to address the 2012 colonization promise from "The Truth," "My Struggle" does, albeit in a throwaway line from O'Malley. It turns out that 2012 marked the beginning of this more aggressive push by the aliens and their human conspirators. It's not overt colonization, like most of us pictured in our heads. Rather, 2012 marked the ratcheting-up of the shadow government's game; perhaps that year signaled a switch from discrediting alien abductees to flat-out killing them, as they do with Sveta. It would've been nice if Carter had given us an overt example from 2012, because as far as I can tell, that was just another year on a continuum that dates back to 2001, a truer example of a sea-change date (although Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1960).
Just as "The Truth" is a summary of the first nine seasons, "My Struggle" is a thesis statement of the miniseries. But there's still a mystery to unravel, and we don't get any hints about that mystery in this episode. In the real world, the aforementioned abuses of civil liberties happen because of the inertia of governments: They get bigger and more powerful for the sake of getting bigger and more powerful. In "The X-Files," there has to be more to it, otherwise it's just a libertarian ranting on Facebook rather than a compelling storyline.
Still, it is a pleasure to see the ol' agents again. Duchovny and Anderson continue in their depressed mode from late in the original series and "I Want to Believe." It's not that the actors are unengaged, it's that the characters are depressed: Mulder because he can't comfortably pursue his life's work and because Scully has split from him, Scully because she's exhausted from trying (and failing, it turns out) to live with Mulder and for taking on the world's most challenging medical problems in her day job.
Even when she has an amazing success, like implanting ears onto a kid born without them, Scully can't enjoy it. Part of it is because she's cursed by life – the latest twist is that, sigh, she learns she (and therefore her son, William) possesses alien DNA. But part of it is that she gradually became unhappy as she followed Mulder down his rabbit hole of investigating the shadow government. Rather than the type to enjoy a drink with her coworkers, Scully is the type to address a familiar colleague as "Nurse."
Mulder gets some of the old spark back when O'Malley takes him to see an ARV (alien reproduction vehicle) that was made by a secret group that seemingly splintered off from the shadow government. Sure, Mulder is cynical in his middle age and he rips up his "I Want to Believe" poster upon revisiting his old office. But he perks up when he sees a demonstration of the ARV's ability to hover using free energy and to temporarily disappear from space and time.
Just as Carter effortlessly riffs on his familiar themes, Duchovny and Anderson have not lost any of their chemistry. The same goes for Duchovny and Pileggi. Skinner has slightly mellowed, but – in vintage Skinner fashion – he gets in Mulder's face and tells him to calm down before they both get "pissed off." Throw in some Mark Snow music and the typewriter-font title cards – and I dutifully turned off all the lights to complete the mood -- and there's no denying we're firmly back in "The X-Files" world. Not the 1990s, but the 2016 "X-Files" world, which – as Mulder and O'Malley's recitation of our government's moral crimes attests – is more "X-Files-y" than ever.
It might've been nice if "My Struggle" offered up a truly fresh storyline rather than making us wait another night, but it's undeniable that the return to the world of this beloved TV show is pretty thrilling by itself.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionMon, 25 Jan 2016 00:56:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/25/First-episode-impressions-The-XFiles-miniseries‘X-Files’ flashback: ‘Goblins’ (1994)http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/24/XFiles-flashback-Goblins-1994
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With <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4370492/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">"The X-Files"</a> returning for the start of a six-episode miniseries tonight, I thought it'd be a good time to go on an "X-Files" kick. Having already done reviews of the nine TV seasons and two movies, that means it's time to move on to other media, starting with Charles Grant's <a href="http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Goblins" target="_blank">"Goblins"</a> (1994), the first of six original licensed novels "based on America's boldest new TV series." (My reviews of these novels will include spoilers, because hey, you've had two decades to read them.)
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"Goblins" is an effective novel if you aren't being too picky. It works as a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery, with several scenes of Mulder, Scully and two accompanying agents – the male Webber, who idolizes Mulder, and the female Andrews, on her first assignment – discussing theories about the case. Set near Fort Dix in New Jersey (the home state of the author, who died in 2006), "Goblins" features a villain who takes on an all-black, near-invisible form to kill people at night.
There's seemingly no good reason for Mulder and Scully to be grouped with another pair of partners, and for most of the novel I was unsure if that was part of the mystery or a miscalculation by Grant. (As "The X-Files" moved forward, Mulder and Scully almost always worked cases as a duo.) Thankfully, it turns out to be the former: Andrews is a plant of a new assistant director named Douglas, who has temporarily taken over for Skinner (who isn't mentioned in the book).
The novel is set in early Season 2, after the X-Files have been reopened but before Scully's abduction. Grant's feel for "The X-Files" is quite a bit off considering what the show would eventually become, but it's even off base by the standards of those early days.
Jarringly, Mulder resists taking on both this case and a Louisiana-based case that Douglas pitches to him, about a killer who seemingly disappears. Mulder doesn't want the X-Files to be shut down again, so he's hesitant to pursue cases that he can't close. This is of course counterintuitive, as X-Files cases are difficult to close by their very nature; still, it's somewhat understandable. The problem is that Mulder never shows hesitance in the TV series.
Other details are off, too. While shooting wadded-up paper into wastepaper baskets in his office, Mulder misses regularly, which seems out of character. He has a longtime friend, a sports reporter named Carl Barelli. Mulder likes to hang out at a bar near his residence called Ripley's, and he had dated a waitress named Trudy a couple times. Granted, Season 1 features a lot of old colleagues and old flames of both Mulder and Scully. It wasn't until the series found its footing that it admitted Mulder and Scully were (aside from their mutual attachment) loners and workaholics.
In another oddity, Scully pitches a weird science theory, which Mulder then latches on to. Usually, it is Mulder who comes up with the solution. It is kind of refreshing that Scully is correct for once, but it undermines the notion that she holds on to her skepticism until Season 8. At least Grant adds some verisimilitude by having Scully think along the lines of "God help me, I'm starting to sound like Mulder."
It's understandable that Grant wanted to build up the universe of "The X-Files" with shifty AD Douglas (the TV series, after affirming that Skinner is a good guy, later featured double-dealing assistant directors as a trope, so Grant was ahead of the game here) and a home bar and ex-girlfriends for Mulder, while also fast-tracking Scully's conversion to the Believer POV. Grant didn't realize that fans would actually embrace the loner nature of the lead characters and their slow-burn arcs, and that the show's deliberate pace would be seen as a feature, not a bug.
The plot and of "Goblins" is shaky – I had trouble keeping all the characters straight at times, and Grant overdoes it in connecting everyone together (in addition to being Mulder's friend, Carl is obsessed with Scully and is also a relative of one of the goblin's victims) – and the solution doesn't quite stick. The "goblin" is a police dispatcher who volunteers for a secret military science experiment that turns her into a chameleon (while also killing her). But she's not able to control her changing skin color, so she uses makeup to cover it up. It seems unlikely such a strategy could hold up to close scrutiny. And her motive, as it turns out, is that she simply enjoys killing; something tying into her anger over the experiment's failure might've added depth to the villain.
Grant's writing style is what kept me churning through the 277-page paperback. He has a flair for noir, with curtains blowing in the breeze, hallways lit only by a couple harsh bulbs, and rain-shrouded streets. The fictional Marville, N.J., comes alive – so to speak – as a small town kept afloat by the proximity of Army and Air Force bases. Broadly, Grant paints the "X-Files" world; it's only if you zoom in on the details that you see the flaws.
In this regard, the book is similar to several Season 1 and 2 episodes. But on the other hand, I – and many fans – find those early misfires endearing, because even if they haven't found the characterization and plotting groove yet, they have a flair for exploring weird ideas. Chris Carter probably never read "Goblins," and if he did, he'd likely reject it for not fitting with the feel of the show. Still, for die-hard fans, it's fascinating to see how Grant tries to get a handle on a TV series that is still finding itself, sometimes guessing wrong in the process.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumSun, 24 Jan 2016 02:24:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/24/XFiles-flashback-Goblins-1994Short story collection ‘Trust No One’ whets appetite for return of ‘X-Files’http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/6/Short-story-collection-Trust-No-One-whets-appetite-for-return-of-XFiles
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"The X-Files" returned to comics in 2013, it will return to the small-screen for six episodes starting on Jan. 24, and last year it returned to bookshelves with <a href="https://www.idwpublishing.com/product/x-files-trust-no-one/" target="_blank">"Trust No One,"</a> a collection of short stories published by IDW, which also produces the comics. With the exception of the "I Want to Believe" movie novelization in 2008, it marks the first "X-Files" book since a six-book run in during the show's heyday in 1990s.
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These 15 stories are hit and miss; I'd recommend this collection for "X-Files" die-hards but not casual fans. As is often the case with books published by companies that don't regularly publish books, it has a higher-than-usual percentage of typos and line-editing errors, although it's not so bad as to render it unreadable. Many of the stories could've benefited from one more pass from a copy editor, and some of them needed a lot more work. Still, there are some valuable additions to the lore and some just-plain-fun monster yarns; some require the short-story format while others feel like rough outlines for a TV episode and actually suffer a bit in this format.
Here are the 10 standout stories:
1. "Dusk" by Paul Crilley (set in 2015 in Castle Bluff, N.H.) – Crilley riffs on the "Twilight" craze with the thinly veiled stand-in of the "Dusk" novels, written by a recluse who hates his own books. Rumors that the "Dusk" vampire is real draw several teen girls to the area, many of whom go missing. It's a fun commentary on shallow pop fiction.
2. "Back in El Paso, My Life Will Be Worthless" by Keith R.A. DeCandido (1994, El Paso, Texas) – DeCandido, who also showed great insight into the "Firefly" verse with his "Serenity" novelization, introduces the evocative Special Agent Jack Colt, who resists help from Mulder and Scully in investigating a serial-killing spree that continues after several suspects are locked up for the crimes.
3. "Paranormal Quest" by Ray Garton (1997, Bella Vista, Calif.) – Garton riffs on haunted-house reality shows by throwing in a twist where a person in the house, rather than the building itself, might be haunted.
4. "Statues" by Kevin J. Anderson (1995, Furnace Creek, Calif.) – Anderson, who also penned two 1990s "X-Files" novels, is great at painting an evocative picture, though not quite as good at surprising a reader. But the concept of people turning to stone would've made a great "X-Files" episode.
5. "The House on Hickory Hill" by Max Allan Collins (1997, Banewich, Mass.) – Similar to Garton's story, Collins – who also wrote the "I Want to Believe" movie novelization, delves into the backstory of a haunted house.
6. "Oversight" by Aaron Rosenberg (1994, Washington, D.C.) – Early in the show's run, Skinner's motives were presented as a mystery; later, it became clear he was on the side of Mulder and Scully. Here, he battles an FBI auditor to keep the X-Files open while also investigating an X-File on his own.
7. "The Beast of Little Hill" by Peter Clines (1995, Little Hill, Mo.) – It starts as a fun story of M&S investigating two rival backwater museums showing alien remains encased in ice. Similar to that "Scooby Doo" episode with the Wooly Mammoth, the aliens might not be dead after all.
8. "Non Gratum Anus Rodentum" by Brian Keene (1994, Washington, D.C.) – Like "Oversight," we get more insight into Skinner, as it turned out he experienced an X-File back in his Vietnam War days, although he didn't totally realize it at the time. A quarter century later, the case resurfaces.
9. "Loving the Alien" by Stephan Petrucha (1997, South Carolina) – In a twist on the format, Petrucha – the primary writer of the 1990s Topps "X-Files" comics – tells the story in present tense and from Scully's perspective. Similar to many Season 8 and 9 episodes, Mulder is central to the story without being in it much.
10. "Clair de Lune" by David Benton and W.D. Gagliani (1994, south of Ottawa) – The authors do a nice job illustrating the snowstorm our agents are stuck in, then do a twist on an old-fashioned werewolf story.
BooksX-Files/MillenniumWed, 06 Jan 2016 19:03:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2016/1/6/Short-story-collection-Trust-No-One-whets-appetite-for-return-of-XFiles‘X-Files’ comic book feels more like the TV show than ever beforehttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2014/2/17/XFiles-comic-book-feels-more-like-the-TV-show-than-ever-before
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While "The X-Files" has a proud tradition in comic books -- enjoying stints at Topps, Dark Horse (one "Lone Gunman" issue) and Wildstorm – it's never felt as much like the TV show as it does in <a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/" target="_blank">"The X-Files" Season 10,</a> which is now nine issues into its run with IDW Comics.
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The reason for this is that Chris Carter helped writer Joe Harris with the series' launch, allowing him to move the mythology forward for the first time in this medium. Although the previous comics never contradicted continuity (in fact, Carter's second-in-command, Frank Spotnitz, penned some of the Wildstorm run), they made sure to not delve into the continuity lest they contradict the "official" future story. For the same reason, the comics stayed away from continuing monster of the week stories. Basically, everything was a new standalone yarn.
But Season 10 is unambiguously canonical, and the mythology issues (1-5 and 8) give me that old feeling of enjoying the story without entirely understanding what's going on. A lot of deceased characters pop up, such as the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Deep Throat and Mr. X. However, they are shapeshifters – very similar to those from the TV show. It was neat to see a Mr. X flashback to 1987 in issue 8, something that couldn't be done if we were watching Season 10 on TV. Pre-1993 (the year Scully teamed up with Mulder) flashbacks could turn out to be something the comic excels at.
The Lone Gunmen's return in Issue 2 – it turns out they faked their deaths – has drawn mixed reactions from fans. I myself have mixed feelings about it, but ultimately I applaud the decision. For one thing, Byers, Langly and Frohike shouldn't have been killed off in the first place; when they died at the end of "Jump the Shark" it felt a lazy decision. Episode co-writer Vince Gilligan later admitted, "I think we made the wrong choice on that one."
For another, there are way too many juicy government conspiracies in 2014 for the Gunmen to be out of the picture. Plus, with more people being aware of government's misdeeds than ever before, it'll be interesting to see how the comic pushes the envelope beyond run-of-the-mill conspiracies. (The Season 10 spinoff, "X-Files: Conspiracy," is already doing that by imagining the opposite of the Higgs Boson, something that's somehow involved in sending information – and advance warnings -- back from the future. The series also provides an excuse for the trio to meet the Ghostbusters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Crow and various Transformers.)
The real pleasure of Season 10, though, is the MOTW sequels. About midway through the TV series' run, I recall that Carter talked about doing more sequels to various MOTW episodes, which tended to artistically end the hour without every question having been answered. "The X-Files" did some sequels, notably delving further into Tooms, Pusher and the serial killer who was obsessed with Scully, but not as many as it could have.
In Issues 6 and 7, "Hosts" beautifully continues the yarn from Season 2's "The Host," about a half-man, half-flukeworm living in the sewers. The issue, the first solo effort from Harris, absolutely sings with "X-Files"-ness even as it gives a complete backstory to the creature. "What we don't know" might've been scary in 1994, but 20 years later, "what we do know" turns out to a creepy capper to the story. Two issues seems to be the perfect length for a MOTW story; Issue 9's cockroach-themed yarn felt just a bit too brisk, like many of the Topps comics.
Also in "Hosts," Mulder and Scully return to their old jobs and old office – a nice counterpoint to early Season 2, the first time they were briefly kicked off the X-files thanks to the office politics of their higher-ups. It feels right. Arguably, Mulder and Scully got a bit tied up with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson toward the end of the TV series and "I Want to Believe." Yes, it makes sense that the actors had had enough of "The X-Files." But Mulder could investigate this stuff forever (he never stopped clipping out weird newspaper stories even when they went into hiding in "I Want to Believe"), and Scully also knows it's important work.
Fans of Doggett and Reyes (including me) get a bone thrown to us in Season 10. Both of them (still FBI agents, but not on the X-files, which had been closed until Mulder and Scully's return in "Hosts") appear separately in the opening five-issue mythology arc, and both are missing by the end of it. It'd be nice if Skinner, Mulder and Scully showed a bit more concern for Doggett and Reyes in the four issues since then, but hey, at least it's better than "IWTB," where the newer agents weren't even mentioned in passing. On the other hand, their disappearances signal a good chance that their stories will continue later in Season 10, and the editor promised as much on the letters page.
Now that the template has been laid down for Season 10, what mythology questions would you like to see explored further? And what MOTW episodes are due for a sequel?
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksMon, 17 Feb 2014 01:13:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2014/2/17/XFiles-comic-book-feels-more-like-the-TV-show-than-ever-before‘X-Files’ Season 10 comic heads up TV blasts from the pasthttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2013/7/18/XFiles-Season-10-comic-heads-up-TV-blasts-from-the-past
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It used to be that when a TV show was canceled, that was the end; any dreams of future projects remained just that -- dreams of the fans. But producers and creative types are starting to realize that just because a show ends, it doesn't mean the fan base stops caring. "Buffy" is about to wrap up Season 9 in comic form (and Season 10 is on the way), a "Fringe" novel is on bookshelves, a "Veronica Mars" movie and books are planned for next year, and "24" will also return for another season in 2014.
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Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is <a href="http://www.idwpublishing.com/catalog/series/2590" target="_blank">"X-Files" Season 10,</a> which is following the "Buffy"/"Angel" template of continuing the TV series in comics. And just as Joss Whedon is the "executive producer" on the Buffyverse titles, Chris Carter is back at the helm of his seminal series about FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigating weird stuff around the country.
IDW Comics' continuation of "The X-Files" is a pleasant surprise because I had assumed that Carter had put storytelling behind him in order to focus on surfing and relaxing. A "Millennium" movie never materialized, nor did a third "X-Files" movie, which should have come out in December 2012 to mark the Mayan apocalypse and tie in with the Season 9 finale. "X-Files" had enjoyed a nice comics run with Topps during the TV series' heyday, and Carter's second-in-command, Frank Spotnitz, penned a few issues for Wildstorm around the time of 2008's "I Want to Believe."
Of course, since Season 10 Issue 1 picks up where that movie left off, Mulder and Scully aren't actually with the FBI anymore. And as with that movie, there's no mention of Doggett and Reyes. But that's OK, because there are a lot of touches that tie in with the saga -- notably Scully wondering aloud if she did the right thing by giving up William for adoption. All told, "Believers Part 1" feels like a Carter-penned season premiere (and, indeed, he is a co-writer).
The dramatic stakes seem higher than any previous "X-Files" yarn in this medium, a reminder that this isn't a mere spinoff for the sake of cashing in. Skinner shows up -- and seemingly winds up killed in his home! Carter and co-writer Joe Harris end up not going that far, but it's still a nicely staged shock as Mulder discovers his barely conscious former boss. The opening is also staged like a TV teaser, as we follow a harried woman running away from monsters -- the "camera" pulls back, and we see it's Scully.
Carter and Harris write "Believers Part 1" like a TV script, and Michael Walsh stages panels in such a way that I can imagine David Duchovny snatching a baseball out of the air in a certain smirking way, Gillian Anderson ministering to a patient with a pleasant bedside manner, and Mitch Pileggi stiffly walking into a room, trench coat flowing. Walsh's stylized art doesn't go for photo-realism the way Topps and Wildstorm did; nonetheless, the mood and color of "The X-Files" are spot-on.
It's gonna take more issues to find out what exactly these monsters are, and that's the downside of TV titles switching to comics -- each issue feels like only part of a TV episode, and "The X-Files" is not a show where you can only watch part of an episode and comfortably walk away. More mysteries are peppered in by the freshly inspired writers: Why does a mysterious girl know Scully by a different name? And why are the Lone Gunmen pictured in the teaser for Issue 2? (They were killed off, much to my chagrin, in Season 9.)
And what about the cover art on the Hastings exclusive? Is it just for fun, or are the FBI-partners-turned-lovebirds going to start their own detective agency? There's no indication of this in the first issue, but at any rate, it's a very cool cover.
The story might be better read in a trade paperback collection. Still, I'll be back for Issue 2, because if nothing else, I want to believe a whole "season" of "The X-Files" can work in comic form.
X-Files/MillenniumComic booksThu, 18 Jul 2013 03:28:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2013/7/18/XFiles-Season-10-comic-heads-up-TV-blasts-from-the-pastRewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/9/3/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-I-Want-to-Believe
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I think the second "X-Files" movie, 2008's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443701/
" target="_blank">"I Want to Believe,"</a> is a nice thank-you letter to fans, who are given one last chance to follow Mulder and Scully into the darkness (plus: Hey, there's Skinner!). It certainly has its detractors, though: The film scores a 5.9 on the IMDB ratings (compared to an 8.9 for the series as a whole and 6.8 for the first movie).
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For all the cozily familiar trappings -- Mulder's sense of humor ("Avoid the activities room," he says when approaching a dormitory of sex offenders); the Mulder-Scully relationship (they are living together as a couple, hiding from the FBI as per the end of "The Truth"); and a deliciously grisly case about a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein in the West Virginia mountains -- this is a new approach to an X-File. Even as a stand-alone tale (there's no mythology here, not even a casual mention of the alien apocalypse looming in December 2012), "IWTB" is short on action and long on quiet scenes and mood (it was shot in the Vancouver winter, and it looks darkly beautiful).
The parts that detractors probably consider padding are Scully's mission to cure a dying boy with cutting-edge stem-cell surgery; lots of time spent with Father Joe, a convicted child molester with visions that lead to clues on this case; and the up-and-down of the Mulder-Scully relationship (c'mon, we all know that Mulder chasing down one more X-File isn't going to cause Scully to break up with him).
When I saw this in the theater, I probably had a smile on my face from start to finish because I was happy just to see these characters again (it had been six years since "The Truth," and I hadn't watched many reruns in the interim). Now I can see that the detractors aren't entirely off base, even though I think they're being a little harsh.
If "IWTB" was edited down to a 44-minute episode emphasizing the creepy villains and spending less time on Mulder's "Just when I got out, they drag me back in!" arc, I think it would rank as a fan-favorite episode. The two-headed dog, the shot of the guy's head (blinking, no less!) on ice as it waits to be attached to a woman's body -- this all shows that Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz knew they had to step up the wiggins factor for the big screen, and they delivered.
Still, I stand by that other stuff. The guest cast features Billy Connolly, taking a rather thankless role as a psychic yet commanding the screen (gotta love an Irish brogue); and Callum Keith Rennie as the main Russian thug -- he gives a vaguely scary, vaguely sympathetic turn that subconsciously makes me think he killed Rosie Larsen, too. There's also Nicki Aycox (who also played a teenager in "Rush") as a kidnap victim, and Stephen E. Miller (Frank's Season 3 boss on "Millennium") as a feed store manager, a couple of casting choices I noticed on this latest viewing.
The FBI agents who call upon Mulder -- Amanda Peet's Whitney and Xzibit's Drummy -- well, they are blank plot devices so that we can focus on the saga's heroes; there's an oh-so-slight hint of a Mulder-Whitney attraction, but it's a tough sell. The unfortunate side effect of having two inexperienced agents desperately calling on Mulder the first time they stumble upon an X-File is that it strongly suggests the X-Files and Doggett's and Reyes' jobs no longer exist. This is the second snubbing of Doggett and Reyes, who carried "The X-Files" through the last two seasons: We didn't learn the fate of their jobs in the finale, and here we learn they got fired, but only by reading between the lines. Also, it means we can't even get D&R yarns in other media.
I've mostly gotten over it, though, especially since it looks like even Mulder and Scully are done on the big screen, to say nothing of Doggett and Reyes and the "X-Files" mythology arc. If that's the case, "I Want to Believe" is a mostly satisfying final chapter.
(Still, can we at least get that December 2012 alien colonization story in comic-book form? Please, Wildstorm?)
What are your thoughts on "The X-Files: I Want to Believe": A good creepy yarn, or too padded with character stuff? And do you think we'll see another "X-Files" movie, or is the franchise dead? Share your thoughts below.
Also, now that I've wrapped up the "X-Files"/"Millennium" portion of "Rewatching and reviewing the classics," what classic TV show should I tackle next? I have a few ideas, but I could potentially be swayed by an impassioned plea.
MoviesX-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:47:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/9/3/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-I-Want-to-BelieveWatching and reviewing the classics: 'Millennium' Season 3http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/30/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-3
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//millennium-season-3.jpg">
On my list of all-time favorite TV showrunners, Chris Carter ranks considerably higher than Glen Morgan and James Wong. Yet it's hard to not side completely with Morgan and Wong in the conflict that is well known to <a href="http://www.tv.com/millennium/show/1172/summary.html" target="_blank">"Millennium"</a> fans.
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Carter -- swamped with "X-Files" tasks -- handed off the "Millennium" baton to Morgan and Wong for Season 2, and they ran with it, creating a flawed but invigorating batch of episodes that is widely considered to be the series' best. It was a highly serialized season, it broke up Frank and Catherine, it made the Millennium Group into a mysterious cult, almost every religious nutjob was proven correct, and a new favorite character was Lara Means, a Morgan/Wong creation. And it killed off Catherine.
Most of this was done well, but at the same time, Carter wouldn't have done ANY of these things if he was plotting the season. So he fired Morgan and Wong and shifted gears for Season 3 (1998-99, Fox). This would be easier to accept if: One, Season 3 didn't start off so blandly compared to the end of Season 2, and two, Carter wasn't so blunt in his dismissal of a season beloved by the fans. He admitted as recently as the Season 2 DVD documentary to not even watching every episode from Season 2!
Technically, Carter wasn't the showrunner for Season 3, but he did write some episodes, and the exec producers were his hand-picked guys, Chip Johannessen and Michael Duggan.
So in the Great "Millennium" Debate, there really is no debate: Morgan and Wong are the good guys and Carter is the bad guy. And it's hard to argue against that when watching the first half of Season 3, which kills the momentum from Season 2. Lara Means will never be heard from again (sure, she went crazy in the Season 2 finale, but she wasn't dead); the epic viral outbreak from the end of Season 2 is re-imagined as a localized event; Frank is working for the FBI with a new partner and a Skinner-like boss, moving "Millennium" closer to Carter's "X-Files" comfort zone (and, indeed, we get more supernatural-themed episodes); and the Millennium Group, rather than being ambiguous and internally fractured, is now Just Plain Evil, but for no clear reason.
It's tough not to be bitter about the first half of Season 3, but (deep breath to let the bitterness wash away) things get better starting with episode 11, "Collateral Damage." It's not a great episode, but it has good guest turns by James Marsters and Jacinda Barrett, and it was just enough to get me enjoying "Millennium" again.
As for Frank's new partner, Emma Hollis: There's not a thing wrong with her. Klea Scott nicely moves Emma from being a wide-eyed rookie to a respected partner of Frank's; she has an interesting, expressive face. And this was never really a Jar Jar Binks situation where she was blamed for ruining the show. The early episodes were bad, but it was clear the problems ran much deeper than a new character, and Scott was never blamed.
It could be argued that while Season 3 isn't as good as the first two seasons, it is generally more crisply written and more accessible, what with the tried-and-true formula of two FBI agents solving crimes -- Frank doing his profiling-and-visions thing with Emma's good old-fashioned cop work assisting him. These 22 episodes generally make more logical sense than what we saw in the first two seasons, even if they aren't as memorable.
"Millennium," maybe more than any other TV series, calls to mind a bevy of paths not taken. What would Carter's Season 2 have been like? What would Morgan and Wong's Season 3 have been like? What would Season 4 have been like? How would the show have handled the actual turn of the millennium if it had still been on the air?
The latest question to arise is: What would a "Millennium" movie be like? Even Henrickson has lobbied for a movie -- he says on the Season 3 DVD documentary that he's "haunted" by not having made a "Millennium" movie yet, and argues that Carter is sitting on a gold mine. And I have no doubt that it could be great, but I'm not holding my breath that we'll ever see it. (I'm even starting to worry about the lack of buzz for a third "X-Files" movie, which is such an obvious fit for December 2012.)
We got the Season 3 we got, and no, it's not a great season (and it includes perhaps the worst episode of TV ever made, the nonsensical, overly stylized "Omerta"). But it's the only Season 3 we're ever going to get, and while I am firmly on Morgan and Wong's side in the Great "Millennium" Debate, I'd also argue that Season 3 is worth watching once it hits its second-half stride.
Here are my top 10 episodes from the disappointing-but-not-as-terrible-as-its-reputation Season 3 of "Millennium":
1 and 2. "Via Dolorosa"/"Goodbye to All That" (episodes 21 and 22) -- Season 3 wraps up with its best work, as we follow a creepy serial killer who uses night-vision goggles to invade homes at night, then stages his victims in scenes of domestic bliss. By part two, he has shacked up with an unsuspecting blind woman (allowing for a voyeuristic effect where we can see what he's up to, but she only has vague suspicions). Topping it off, there's the Millennium Group connection: Apparently they created this killer! And Emma is offered a Devil's bargain to join the group in exchange for her father's Alzheimer's cure. Considering what it had to work with up to this point, it's not a bad two-parter to close out the series. (Yeah, there was the matter of that "X-Files" crossover the next year, but even the writers admitted that was just an excuse to catch up with Frank Black one last time.)
3. "Nostalgia" (20) -- This is a good old-fashioned serial killer mystery set in a small town (Emma's hometown, in fact) that prefers to brush such things under the rug. The guest stars do good work, and indeed the episode feels nostalgic toward the early days of the series, when it was all about Frank getting into the minds of killers and solving the crimes.
4. "Darwin's Eye" (17) -- One of the best serial killers since the early days of Season 1 is played by Tracy Middendorf (also a memorable guest star on "Angel" and "The X-Files"). She has a perfect sweet-yet-slightly-off look for playing someone who may or may not be innocent. It's also interesting how Frank is so good at getting into serial killers' heads by this point that he almost seems to sympathize with them as much as their victims.
5. "Collateral Damage" (11) -- It has a standard plot about a veteran done wrong by the U.S. government, but it's neat to see "Buffy's" James Marsters using his own American accent (although he has Spike's bleach-blond hair, suggesting that he squeezed this into his shooting schedule), and Jacinda Barrett as Peter Watts' daughter.
6. "The Sound of Snow" (12) -- Frank sees visions of Catherine in this episode that doesn't totally come together yet is the fan-favorite of Season 3 for the way it serves as a coda to Season 2. Then again, a lot of the earlier seasons' episodes had big plot holes and we still loved 'em, so in that sense, this is a refreshing throwback.
7. "Antipas" (13) -- Lucy Butler is back to taunting Frank, who is -- as ever -- the only one who realizes she's the Devil. He even has a line where he says something to the effect of: "You can't trust her. She's the Devil." Henrickson and Sarah-Jane Redmond do a great job of playing this rivalry.
8. "Saturn Dreaming of Mercury" (16) -- Brittany Tiplady might not be the most amazing child actor ever, but she has great chemistry with Henrickson. So when we get a Jordan-centric episode like this one, it's easy to connect because we see her through the eyes of Frank.
9. "... Thirteen Years Later" (5) -- Michael Perry attempts to channel Darin Morgan in an offbeat Halloween episode where a horror movie is being filmed based on Frank Black's career -- very similar to the "Hollywood A.D." episode of "The X-Files" that would arrive a year later. This one is slightly more successful, as the weirdness (KISS makes a guest appearance, for crying out loud) falls just on the side of interesting rather than stupid.
10. "TEOTWAWKI" (3) -- I have a soft spot for TV episodes that do not at all survive the test of time. This is a glaring example because the bad guy is driven by Y2K fears to kill his own children. It must have seemed stupidly crazy at the time, but now it's stupid, crazy ... and a deliciously absurd time capsule.
What were your favorite episodes of Season 3? Are you a Season 3 apologist or the type who prefers to believe "Millennium" ended with the Season 2 finale? Share your thoughts in the comment thread below.
Up next, I still have to post my review of "X-Files: I Want to Believe," thus wrapping up the Chris Carter portion of "Rewatching and Reviewing the Classics," at least for now ("Harsh Realm" is still out there for the watching, and I might get to it someday; I've heard it's great, but I didn't like the few episodes I saw when it aired).
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:40:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/30/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-3Watching and reviewing the classics: ‘Millennium’ Season 2http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/6/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-2
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//millennium-frank-black.jpg">
The second season of "Millennium" (1997-98, Fox) is some sort of flawed masterpiece. Given heft by the performances of Lance Henrickson (as Frank Black), Terry O'Quinn (as Peter Watts) and Kristen Cloke (as Lara Means), "Millennium" clearly establishes itself here as a cut above all those other sort-of-"X-Files" shows from the 1990s.
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Now, I'm not saying that the ongoing storyline should be taken more seriously than any of those other shows -- not on the surface, anyway. But there's a certain nightmare/dream reality to the vague, moody dealings of the Millennium Group, which sends the aforementioned trio on cases even as it argues amongst itself about the possible End of the World. Oh, and even though it fights Evil, it might be corrupt itself. Making all of this nonsense work are those three totally committed actors, the great Vancouver visuals, Mark Snow's score and -- above all -- the fact that "Millennium" works as a horror piece. That's something I can't say about any other TV show, at least not with this degree of consistency.
Season 1 firmly showed us that there's no relief from the darkness on this show, and although Season 2 adds humor to the mix -- notably, Darin Morgan contributes two bizarre and pretty great episodes -- we understand that there's no turning away from the horror here. So when in the season finale, a family is enjoying a happy reunion dinner and the camera keeps cutting to the plate of chicken, we know that they are all going to die horribly because the previous scene showed an infected bird. On a pseudo-horror show, this sequence would play as tragic or morbid; on "Millennium" it is horrific and affecting. And, as fans of this strange hour of TV know, it gets even more horrifying when Catherine is infected later in the episode.
Further proving that "Millennium" doesn't pull its punches (even if it swings wildly), in the "Owl"/"Roosters" two-parter, it features yet another murder in Frank's basement (Frank's best friend Bob Bletcher was killed there in Season 1, by the Devil herself). The basement of the yellow house looks like all of our basements (creepiness factor No. 1), and the house is empty because it's up for sale (creepiness factor No. 2). And speaking of the Devil woman, Lucy Butler (played with a mix of sexiness and scariness by Sarah-Jane Redmond): She keeps teenagers trapped in rooms playing repeated elevator music in "A Room with No View," which I never want to see again yet can't quite forget.
With Glen Morgan and James Wong taking the reins from the overworked Chris Carter in Season 2, "Millennium" goes from being too anthologized to being too serialized. When reviewing Season 1, I lamented that there was too much sameness in the Serial Killer of the Week hours. I have the opposite complaint about Season 2: Sometimes it gets so weird that I longed for a simple throwback episode just to catch my breath.
My other major complaint is that Frank and Catherine split up after Frank kills a man to save her in the first episode, "The Beginning and the End"; she says she doesn't want that darkness in her house. The breakup comes out of nowhere and doesn't jibe at all with the loving family we saw in Season 1. While the execution is poor, I understand what the writers were going for: In Carter's Season 1, the idea was to show the contrast between Frank's gloomy job and the brightness of his wife, his daughter and their yellow house. In Morgan and Wong's Season 2, the idea is to show Frank as a dark loner consumed by his job, numbly intoning "Soylent green is people" to get into his Millennium database; without his family as a safety net, there's a real danger of him plummeting into darkness. (Side note: I love how Lara says "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" for her intranet connection; it paints her as a female Frank and makes me think I could watch a show about her, too.)
Overall, I was held in the thrall of the great-looking, great-sounding, wonderfully acted Season 2 of "Millennium." I'm still trying to figure out what it was all about, but I don't entirely mean that in a bad way. While I've given up on other ambitious-but-flawed TV shows, "Millennium" has the opposite effect on me: I might rewatch these episodes again someday.
Here are my top 10 of Season 2's 23 episodes:
1. "Luminary" (episode 12) -- It features the most beautiful use of the British Columbia wilderness of any Ten Thirteen show as Frank ventures into the Alaska woods in search of a boy who disappeared. It borrows unapologetically from the real-life "Into the Wild" story, but it beat that movie to the screen by a decade, so it gets a free pass. Unlike the real story, this episode has a happy ending, and that's especially satisfying on a show where you don't expect it.
2. "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" (9) -- I actually like this Darin Morgan episode better than "The X-Files' " "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" because it cuts down on the weirdness and focuses more on the kindly, opinionated loner of an author, played by Charles Nelson Reilly. Plus, the sequence where Frank tries a Self-osophy technique for "How Not to Be Dark" but ends up seeing flashes of all the dark imagery from the show's first 30 episodes is an instant classic.
3. "The Mikado" (13) -- Aside from the fact that they are working in the Millennium Group's high-tech computer lab, this is the closest we get to a Season 1 SKOTW throwback as Frank, Peter and Roedecker (the one-man Lone Gunman who is an unsung hero of the season) track a killer who dispatches his victims online when his website reaches a certain number of hits. It has an intense finale as Peter and Roedecker follow Frank's pursuit of the baddie on a slowly refreshing web page (this was back in 1998, after all).
4. "Midnight of the Century" (10) -- Darren McGavin, the Night Stalker himself, is more celebrated for his turn as Arthur Dales on the "X-Files," but he gets a meatier role here as Frank's estranged dad in this stylish flashback-heavy tale of what happened to Frank's vision-haunted mom. "Millennium's" first season wouldn't have touched such a personal yarn with a 10-foot pole, but after watching Henrickson and McGavin sell this stuff, it seems the change is mostly for the better.
5 and 6. "The Fourth Horseman" (22)/"The Time is Now" (23) -- I wouldn't want all my "Millennium" episodes to be this extremely weird, what with the music-video-esque montage of Lara going crazy from her visions and the final sequence that cuts repeatedly to a snowed-out TV screen and ultimately shows Frank with inexplicably white hair. Still, it's hard to turn away from this horrifying and personal two-parter where a plague ushers in the end of the world. "The X-Files" is a better show overall, but it never dared play its endgame card as brashly as "Millennium" does here.
7. "The Curse of Frank Black" (6) -- Similar to that "Angel" episode where Angel doesn't say a single word, this one follows Frank on a personal journey that takes him to the basement of the yellow house (yep, there's that basement again) where he scares the hell out of a bunch of partying kids. There's no such thing as ghosts, this episode states, and that makes the fact that Frank is haunted all the more melancholy.
8. "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" (21) -- You have to admire the sheer audacity of this Darin Morgan entry that finds four devils sitting in a coffee shop lamenting how humans have made their jobs superfluous by bringing so much misery on themselves. The sequence showing a guy working a repetitive job who calmly jumps out of his window, only to discover joyous freedom as he's falling to his death, is a slice of funny/sad beauty.
9. "Anemnesis" (19) -- I generally don't like episodes that give Frank short shrift, but Lara is a worthy fill-in, and it's nice to see Catherine contribute as well. Plus, this is a tasty yarn where a Christian girl is persecuted for having visions that contradict the Bible (as it was approved at the Council of Nicaea, at least). This being "Millennium," the girl's visions are real, and it parallels nicely with Lara's lifelong curse of seeing angels.
10. "Beware of the Dog" (2) -- It introduces The Old Man, who vaguely fills Frank in on the history and purpose of the Millennium Group. The episode sets the stage for this mood- and metaphor-heavy season with a story about dogs that hound a man into leaving the cabin he built on sacred ground.
Honorable mention: "Siren" (17) -- This episode, along with a couple others, could totally be an X-File, as it features a mysterious woman who appears to men as what they want to see. Before I embarked on my "Millennium"-watching project, I thought the series was the same as "The X-Files," only with Lance Henrickson, darker cinematography and more brooding. Generally, it's not similar to "The X-Files," but I'm glad a few episodes are. Besides, it fits that there should be some supernatural yarns on "Millennium" since: 1, Frank and his daughter, Jordan -- not to mention Lara -- have supernatural abilities, and 2, the series are part of the same larger universe, as shown by the "X-Files" Season 7 crossover episode and the two Jose Chung yarns.
What are your favorite episodes of "Millennium's" second season? Share your thoughts below. Then I'll be back with a review of the third and final season. It's generally despised by fans -- as apparently it kills the momentum of Season 2 and goes back to standalone mode -- but I'm still curious to check it out.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:05:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/6/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-2Watching and reviewing the classics: ‘Millennium’ Season 1http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/9/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-1
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//millennium.jpg">
Still hankering for an "X-Files" fix after rewatching all nine seasons of Chris Carter's most famous show, I decided to finally check out <a href="http://www.tv.com/millennium/show/1172/summary.html?q=millennium&tag=search_results;title;1
" target="_blank">"Millennium,"</a> which in my head was like a second-rate, but still good, "X-Files." (It is also technically part of "The X-Files" universe due to the Season 7 crossover episode.)
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It took me only the first episode -- and not even the whole 44 minutes -- of Season 1 (1996-97, Fox) to be disabused of the notion that I was going to get "X-Files"-style fun. Starting with a serial killer who reads French poetry under his breath at peep shows and then kills the strippers, "Millennium" is dark stuff, visually and thematically. It doesn't have monsters and aliens to escape to; in their place are serial killers and Biblical demons representing undiluted evil. It also has no humor whatsoever (although that trait makes it kind of morbidly funny).
Carter's second-most-lauded show starts off firmly in the Serial Killer of the Week (SKOTW) mold, but I get a sense that Carter expected that formula to work better than it did. The first 12 episodes have already blended together in my head. "Millennium" breaks free of the formula in a big way in episode 18, "Lamentation," the first hour to explicitly feature a supernatural character -- and it's an angel on the trail of the Devil, no less.
I should clarify: That angel, who strikes down demons with bolts of lightning (although bystanders see him as firing a gun), is the first supernatural GUEST character. The show's MAIN character, Frank Black (the outstanding Lance Henrickson, without whom "Millennium" would not work at all), is psychic: When he examines a victim's corpse as a member of the Millennium Group, he sees flashes of their murder. That makes him darn good at catching baddies, especially when combined with his criminal-profiling skills.
Despite my feeling that many of the early SKOTW episodes are too similar to each other, "Millennium" got under my skin. I was slightly more depressed than usual after watching too many of these episodes in a row. Yet I was compelled to keep pressing play on the next installment because of "Millennium's" overall addictiveness.
This comes about from Mark Snow's mesmerizingly sad score (the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbDmhKK41kM&feature=related" target="_blank">theme song</a> has to be on the short list of the all-time greats); Frank's resigned determination to make a bad world a slightly better place; the sunny contrast provided by Frank's smart and loving wife, Catherine (Megan Gallagher), and adorable little girl, Jordan (Brittany Tiplady); and even the regular chats about the nature of evil. I also appreciate the fact that while "Millennium" operates in the real world (albeit a grim version of it), everyone is unfazed by Frank's gift; thus we are spared "Medium"/"Ghost Whisperer"-type scenes where people accuse Frank of being full of crap.
Frank doesn't have a steady partner in Season 1 -- the closest would be his Millennium Group contact Peter Watts (Terry O'Quinn, later of "Lost" fame) -- so some of the Partners of the Week (POTW) talk to Frank about how their job is eating away at them. I guess Frank just has the kind of face where new acquaintances feel comfortable opening up about Evil. Episode three, "Dead Letters," is an especially strong entry due to the guest turn by James Morrison (later of "24" fame).
Ideally, I think "Millennium" should've been structured like "The X-Files": Standalone POTW/SKOTW episodes alternating with grand mythology episodes featuring the Devil. But the first myth ep doesn't arrive until episode 13 ("Force Majeure," which features clones a la Samantha Mulder, yet manages to make even less sense than the "X-Files" myth arc), so at that point Season 1 seems to make a jarring shift in style, as opposed to the smooth back-and-forth of "The X-Files."
It's great, scary stuff in "Lamentation" when the lights go out in the Blacks' house, Catherine finds a human kidney in the fridge and the intruder slowly descends the staircase and briefly morphs into the Devil. The sequel, "Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions," is similarly high-stakes, high-energy fun. But I found the finale, "Paper Dove," hard to watch because Mike Starr (the Gas Man from "Dumb & Dumber") is so completely convincing as a killer who has lost his sanity. At that point, I kind of missed the more innocent, brooding, and comfortably flawed SKOTWs from early in the season.
Whereas "The X-Files" knew what it was from episode one, "Millennium" is all over the place. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but it's hard not to notice (after some light Internet surfing) fans' consensus that "Millennium" was always all over the place. Some have said that each of the three seasons feels like a completely different show.
Still, like I say, it's addictive. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to "X-Files" fans, because human (natural) monsters aren't nearly as fun as inhuman (supernatural) monsters. And as an analysis of evil, "Millennium" falls short of the genre's high point, <a href="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/2/4/Oneseason-wonders-The-Inside
" target="_blank">"The Inside"</a> (2005, Fox). (On the other hand, you can easily find "Millennium" on DVD, whereas "The Inside" hasn't been released.)
It's probably not a major spoiler to say that by the end of Season 1, Frank and his Millennium Group colleagues have no solid answers about the Nature of Evil. Still, the questions are compelling enough that I'm going to start on Season 2 right now.
Here are my top 10 episodes from the 22-episode first season:
1. "Lamentation" (episode 18) -- The first out-and-out scary sequence finds the Devil (or at least Lucy Butler, a thinly veiled stand-in for Lucifer) invading the Blacks' home. And we know things are serious when she kills Bob Bletcher in the Blacks' basement.
2. "Dead Letters" (3) -- The first half of the season was all SKOTW hours, and this was one of the best, thanks to the partnership of Frank and James Morrison, the guy who played Bill Buchannon on "24."
3. "Pilot" (1) -- The episode that started it all sets the stage for the first half of Season 1 -- it's a pitch-black serial-killer story where the only supernatural element is Frank's ability. It caught me off guard when I first saw it -- I thought, "Uh, oh, this show might not be for me." But the series' twists and turns since then have given the first episode an innocent, nostalgic appeal. Also, it has that great Henrickson delivery when he says the killer doesn't see the world the way we do, and someone asks "How does he see it?" "Differently," Frank deadpans.
4. "Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" (19) -- In the sequel to "Lamentation," Frank is offered a job with the Devil (in much the same way Wolfram & Hart would attempt to recruit Angel on "Angel"), further laying out this show's mythology.
5. "Covenant" (16) -- The guy who played Kritschgau on "The X-Files" and Pacey's dad on "Dawson's Creek" gives a good turn as a guy convinced that he has murdered his entire family. Frank begs to differ, and it's fun to watch him piece together what really happened.
6. "Blood Relatives" (7) -- When you have a new serial killer every week (as "Millennium" did in its early days), you have to get creative. In this one, the killer picks out vulnerable targets at funerals.
7. "Sacrament" (15) -- This time it's personal for Frank as his sister-in-law is abducted. Also, Jordan shows signs of having inherited Frank's ability. This is the episode where "Millennium" becomes less of a detached procedural, and that's a good thing when you have an actor like Henrickson.
8. "Kingdom Come" (6) -- Interestingly, considering that religious fanatics would cause a lot of problems for Frank in future seasons, holy men are the innocents here, targeted by a serial killer.
9. "The Wild and the Innocent" (10) -- I gotta put this on my list if only because it borrows twice from the catalogue of Bruce Springsteen. First with the title, and secondly with the plot, which loosely follows "Johnny 99," about a couple cutting a bloody swath across Nebraska.
10. "Broken World" (20) -- Perhaps the best-looking episode of Season 1, it takes place in western North Dakota and makes good use of rural British Columbia. It also has good music from Mark Snow and interesting factoids about horse breeding.
Any "Millennium" fans out there? What are your thoughts on Season 1?
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:19:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/9/Watching-and-reviewing-the-classics-Millennium-Season-1Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 9http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/6/12/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-9
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-9.jpg">
Although the common perception is that "The X-Files" went out with a whimper in Season 9 (2001-02, Fox), I actually found this to be a strong batch of episodes. On the downside, Annabeth Gish (as Monica Reyes) never quite materializes as a worthy partner to Robert Patrick, who by this time had made John Doggett almost as iconic as Mulder and Scully.
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On the plus side, Season 9 doesn't ride on the new partnership. Scully is in every episode, too, sort of as a mentor to Doggett and Reyes; supervisors like Skinner, Follmer and Kersh and super soldiers played by Lucy Lawless, Adam Baldwin and Alan Dale get a lot of screen time; and by the final episode, there are a record five people in the opening credits. With David Duchovny unavailable until the final two hours, "The X-Files" opted to become an ensemble drama, and this was the right decision.
When they first aired, I had serious problems with "Jump the Shark" and "The Truth" (the two-part finale), which to this day are still the most controversial episodes of the series. I liked them more this time around, though. The deaths of the Lone Gunmen are easier to take nine years later.
And while I still wonder if the writers could've come up with something more epic than a courtroom drama for the finale, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from the parade of familiar faces recounting the mythology for the record, complete with classic clips. I don't like that the finale leaves the fate of Doggett's and Reyes' jobs on The X-Files unresolved, but I now understand that they were never more than glorified temps anyway. Mulder and Scully deserve that final scene where they express hope in the face of the alien-colonization date: Dec. 22, 2012. (That might not be a bad day to release the third movie; just a suggestion.)
While Doggett and Reyes are left in limbo at the end, they do get lots of great standalone episodes before that. Season 8 was packed with mythology episodes, but Season 9 gives us a better variety: Some myth episodes about super soldiers, sure, but also strong character pieces (Scully protecting her baby and missing Mulder, Doggett trying to find out who killed his son, Reyes trying to expose Doggett's softer side), quirky Darin Morgan-style hours, and throwback monster-of-the-weeks.
So while "The Truth" definitively reminded me that "The X-Files" as a whole belonged to Mulder and Scully, Season 9's best episodes belonged to Doggett and Reyes, suggesting a bright future for "The X-Files" that, unfortunately, never came to be.
Here are my rankings of the 20 episodes:
1. "Lord of the Flies" (5) -- "The O.C.'s" Samaire Armstrong makes an appearance in an episode that stands on par with "Hungry," "Rush," "Syzygy" and "D.P.O." as an "X-Files" episode that explores the horrors of youth. Here, a teenager can control bugs -- but, of course, he doesn't really have control over his powers.
2. "Release" (17) -- Much like "Closure" wrapped up the Samantha arc in Season 7, "Release" gives Doggett closure on his murdered son's case before the series ends. The ending is ambiguous, but if I'm reading it right, it was Follmer who killed Doggett's son. That's a surprising twist, and I'm also surprised that I didn't remember it from my first viewing.
3. "Sunshine Days" (18) -- One last blast of quirkiness chronicles a guy (Michael Emerson from "Lost") who appears to live in the "Brady Bunch" house. Once you get past that jolt, this is a strong episode that provides an emotional coda for the MOTW portion of "The X-Files." Scully desperately wants proof of the paranormal to vindicate her and her colleagues' nine years of work on the X-Files. She doesn't get it, but she comes to the realization that the journey was its own reward -- and with that message, I suspect Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz were sharing their own take on the series while also bracing fans for the following week's finale.
4. "Audrey Pauley" (11) -- In a rare case of an actor coming back to play a different character on "The X-Files," Tracey Ellis (Lucy Householder in "Oubliette") returns. Like Lucy, Audrey is empathetic, and she provides the emotional touchstone as -- in a role reversal from "4-D" -- Doggett desperately tries to save the life of Reyes, who is trying to escape the psychological dimension she's trapped in.
5. "Improbable" (13) -- I dreaded rewatching this episode, remembering it as being an intolerable hammer blow of whimsy. But I appreciated it this time as a more upbeat take on Season 3's "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," again with an all-knowing person tracking the movements of a serial killer. Unlike Peter Boyle's character, Burt Reynolds' unnamed godlike figure isn't suicidal; rather he takes pleasure in his station in life.
6. "Hellbound" (8) -- The brother of Patrick Swayze is among a strong guest cast in this deliciously grisly old-school standalone about people mysteriously being skinned.
7. "4-D" (4) -- This is a prime example of how much Doggett overshadows Reyes. Gish does most of the heavy acting here, yet I think of this as a great Patrick performance, even though Doggett is just lying paralyzed in a hospital bed. This episode provides the first hint of the Doggett-Reyes romance, which would be revisited a few times and then left hanging when the series ended.
8. "Trust No 1" (6) -- Gillian Anderson totally sells the Scully-Mulder relationship simply by longingly reading emails from her AWOL partner. This episode has a scene where we see Mulder in a rock quarry from a distance. On the first airing, I couldn't help but note how the writers were blatantly working around Duchovny's absence; this time, I appreciated the imagery of how Mulder remained just out of Scully's reach.
9. "Underneath" (12) -- A meat-and-potatoes Jekyll-and-Hyde yarn, with a decent guest turn by the guy who is wrongly (but understandably, given the evidence) accused of a string of murders.
10-11. "Nothing Important Happened Today" (1)/"Nothing Important Happened Today II" (2) -- The plot thickens with the super soldiers, among whose number may be Scully's baby, William. Lucy Lawless as a super soldier without a sense of modesty is among the highlights of this season-launcher.
12-13. "Provenance" (9)/"Providence" (10) -- Just some good, old-fashioned myth-arc stuff, but more personal than ever before because Scully's baby is kidnapped.
14. "Scary Monsters" (14) -- The Mulder-and-Scully-worshipping Leyla Harrison (from Season 8's "Alone") returns in this case about a boy whose imagination becomes reality. Thematically, it can be lumped in with movies like "Forbidden Planet," "Solaris," "Event Horizon" and "Sphere," but it doesn't add much to the subgenre.
15. "John Doe" (7) -- Another acting showcase for Patrick finds Doggett waking up in Mexico with no memory of anything. It's a bit hard to watch simply because the situation is frighteningly dire, but Patrick is great, as always.
16-17. "The Truth, Part 1" (19)/"The Truth, Part 2" (20) -- Sure, the courtroom setting as a template for bringing back old characters and ideas smacks of playing it safe. Still, when you consider that Carter and Co. never really had a grand finale in mind, this isn't bad; in fact, it's satisfying to see (almost) everything wrapped up in a tidy bow. Also, at least one fresh fact stuck with me this time around: The Cigarette-Smoking Man is indeed Mulder's father (and Jeffrey Spender's half-brother). For some reason, I didn't catch that revelation the first time around (probably because it's not played up thematically; still, I guess it's an important thing to know as an X-Phile).
18. "Jump the Shark" (15) -- In this wrap-up of the dangling threads from "The Lone Gunmen," Langly, Byers and Frohike die heroically. The killing off of the Gunmen bothered me ever since this episode aired, right up until the moment when I rewatched it, and now I'm OK with it. I guess subconsciously I just needed time to accept it.
19. "Daemonicus" (3) -- Doggett and Reyes' first case together -- centered on the creepy idea that people are being picked off based on their names -- depends entirely on mood. But in a rare misfire, writer-director Spotnitz doesn't quite provide it, so what could've been a great episode is instead forgettable.
20. "William" (16) -- On first viewing, I thought it was utterly ridiculous to suggest that a horribly scarred man who turns up at the X-Files office might be Mulder (especially since it was clearly not Duchovny in the role). And then it got more silly when it turned out to be Jeffrey Spender, who was shot in the head the last time we saw him. A sympathetic turn by Spender actor Chris Owens notwithstanding, it was still ridiculous on this viewing.
How would you rank the episodes from Season 9?
And how would you rank the nine seasons? My rankings are 3, 6, 1, 4, 8, 2, 9, 5, 7.
Up next, I'll wrap up my journey down "X-Files" memory lane with a review of the second (and most recent) movie, 2008's "I Want to Believe."
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sun, 12 Jun 2011 01:46:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/6/12/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-9One-season wonders: ‘The Lone Gunmen’http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/5/8/Oneseason-wonders-The-Lone-Gunmen
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//lone_gunmen.jpg">
While few "X-Files" fans will dispute the greatness of the two Lone Gunmen-themed episodes, the actual series <a href="http://www.tv.com/the-lone-gunmen/show/38/summary.html?tag=;summary" target="_blank">"The Lone Gunmen"</a> (2001, Fox) gets mixed reviews. I love the fact that three funny-looking dudes starred in a network TV series and I was sad when it was canceled, but I admit that "The Lone Gunmen" was a work in progress that never totally gelled through 13 episodes.
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Despite telling Byers' story and heavily featuring Frohike and Langly, Season 5's "The Unusual Suspects" and Season 6's "Three of a Kind" still had that "X-Files" tone. Mulder was in the former and Scully was in the latter, but mainly, the vibe was serious; the humor came naturally from the characters themselves.
"The Lone Gunmen" opted to add a comedic tone. It was never offensively or distractingly unfunny, but the comedy always felt a bit gratuitous to me. Bruce Harwood's Byers continued to be the suit-wearing straight man, and Tom Braidwood's Frohike showed more of a temper (memorably pulling out an "ass paddle" on an annoying kid in "Madam, I'm Adam"). The short-statured Frohike was also thrown into visually humorous situations, such as wearing lederhosen in "Eine Kleine Frohike" and a baby-feeding apparatus in "Three Men and a Smoking Diaper" and inexplicably turning out to be a world-class tango dancer known as El Lobo in "Tango de los Pistoleros."
Without a doubt, though, Dean Haglund's Langly was the primary victim of the increased emphasis on visual gags. Granted, Haglund went on to an improv comedy career after "Gunmen" and "The X-Files" ended, but I just wasn't laughing much when Langly:
• barfed into a golf bag after siphoning gas,
• had to give a rectal exam to a bull,
• had his leg humped by a small dog,
• got his face blasted by blue paint,
• was regularly mistaken for a girl due to his hair,
and so forth.
The two new cast members were both likable, despite seeming like network-mandated add-ons at first glance. Stephen Snedden's wide-eyed and dim-witted Jimmy Bond is the audience surrogate so the Gunmen can continue to do their high-tech computer kung-fu without having to explain it to the audience; instead, they explain it to Jimmy (Byers does so patiently; Frohike and Langly do so with exasperation, with Frohike regularly "firing" him). Jimmy also has the funds to keep the Lone Gunman newspaper afloat, thus answering the question of "Where do they get their money?"
The other new addition is Zuleikha Robison (who later appeared on "Lost") as Yves, who adds a woman to the cast and also a rival undercover investigator who gradually becomes the Gunmen's ally. In the short-lived series, we don't find out what organization (if any) she works for or what her ultimate goal is (that will be handled in the Season 9 "X-Files" episode "Jump the Shark," which continues from the "Gunmen" finale "All About Yves"), but there's a nice element of mystery to the fact that all her aliases are anagrams for Lee Harvey Oswald.
Some pundits felt "Gunmen" came along too late in "The X-Files" run, after the franchise's popularity had peaked. Although the characters will always be associated with the zeitgeist of the '90s, I'd argue the Gunmen (who were sadly killed off in "Jump the Shark") are timeless.
In "All About Yves," the trio explains to Jimmy that they try to dig deeper than the mainstream media. Today, the mainstream media, due to budget cuts, have almost no investigative reporters left. As such, The Lone Gunman -- which, as Byers says in "The Lying Game," look like the National Enquirer to many people but must still have the standards of the New York Times -- could really make an impact in 2011, although it would probably do so with a blog-heavy Internet-only newspaper rather than with a print edition. I think if the show had put more emphasis on the importance of the newspaper and allowed the humor to come naturally out of the characters rather than via slapstick and pratfalls, the tone would've been right on.
Still, no one will accuse "Gunmen" of being too simplistic. On more than half of the episodes, I couldn't follow the plot at all, including the pilot episode (which is famous for predicting the World Trade Center attack). The twisty-turny plots call to mind the just-wrapped season of "Fringe."
Also, "Gunmen" was more like "Fringe" than "The X-Files" in the way it explored cutting-edge technology. Sometimes it worked beautifully, as in "Like Water for Octane," about a car that runs on water, and "Planet of the Frohikes," with its super-intelligent chimpanzee.
But at other times I struggled to suspend my disbelief. The second episode, "Bond, Jimmy Bond," shows that the Gunmen (via Yves) have access to a device you can plug into the top of your mouth that makes you sound like another person. "Eine Kleine Frohike" is wrapped up when Jimmy uses not only that device, but also a "Mission: Impossible" style mask that makes him look exactly like another character. (This was later used to comedic effect in "The Lying Game" when Mitch Pileggi does a great Jimmy Bond impression.)
The problem with the "M:I" masks is that several hairy situations come up where you can say "Why didn't they just disguise themselves?" It's too convenient of a solution.
Despite my criticisms, I have a soft spot for "The Lone Gunmen." You're not likely to find three more un-Hollywood guys as TV leads (all are Canadian actors who haven't had any other major roles, and Braidwood's main job was as a crewman on "The X-Files") and it was a pleasure hanging out with them on their noble missions to expose government corruption every Friday. Sure, they had a good run on TV (appearing in all nine seasons of "The X-Files"), but I still say their mission ended too soon.
What are your thoughts on "The Lone Gunmen?" Share your comments below. Up next, it's back to the parent show with a review of "The X-Files' " ninth and final season.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sun, 08 May 2011 15:26:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/5/8/Oneseason-wonders-The-Lone-GunmenRewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 8http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/4/9/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-8
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-8.jpg">
I blazed through my rewatching of "The X-Files" eighth season (2000-01, Fox), which plays like a page-turner of a novel and yet covers a ton of ground, from Scully getting a new partner to finally partnering with Mulder in an unabashedly romantic sense.
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When it aired, I thought this was the best season of "The X-Files." I can't say that anymore, but I will argue that Season 8 is the best achievement. Season 3, featuring the glory years of the Mulder-Scully dynamic, has to rank as the best season, and Season 6 -- the first in Los Angeles -- was a remarkable second wind for the show.
In Season 8, the show finds its third wind thanks to the addition of Robert Patrick's John Doggett, who gets water thrown in his face in his first meeting with Scully, and who gets pushed into a chair in his first meeting with Mulder. But after proving his worth by doing the blue-collar work of investigating monsters (the standalones this year harken back to a Season 1 vibe, as the cinematographer and location scouts get in a groove we haven't seen since Vancouver), Scully gives the dogged Doggett Mulder's Apollo 11 medallion symbolizing teamwork. Aw.
The only flaw of this season (which, likes Seasons 3 and 6, doesn't have a bad episode) is the over-emphasis on Doggett being The Skeptic. Even Patrick expressed skepticism about this in a DVD feature, noting that Doggett retained his stance even after being eaten and regurgitated by a monster in "The Gift." Ultimately, though, Patrick made such an impression on "The X-Files" that he is now more associated with John Doggett than with the T-1000 in "Terminator 2."
He's not the only good actor doing good work in Season 8. Nicholas Lea's Alex Krycek gets a gripping sendoff courtesy a bullet from Skinner; even in his final moments, we aren't totally sure about his loyalties. And Annabeth Gish -- although not as good of an actor as Patrick, Duchovny or Anderson -- is a cute contrast to Scully's beauty, and we'll see in Season 9 how the Doggett-Monica Reyes chemistry works out.
More serialized than ever before, Season 8 launches a new twist on the familiar mythology. The Brian Thompson-looking rebel aliens are now populating the planet with formerly human, now-alien super soldiers (or, as the Brooklyn-accented Doggett says in the season finale -- and about 100 times in Season 9, if memory serves -- "supah soljahs"). These are sort of like the alien-human hybrids that came about via the black oil infection, but even more Terminator-like.
The biggest twist is that Mulder and Scully themselves are the X-Files: Mulder is tortured by the alien rebels on their spaceship, and Scully is pregnant with an inexplicable baby. That final kiss provides satisfying closure for 'shippers; I liked it a lot more on this viewing than when the episode first aired (since I was a latecomer to the show). And in the scene before that, people who wanted the show to continue even if Duchovny and Anderson quit (that includes me) are given their giggle-worthy scene. Doggett, with Reyes at his side and in a moment that would make Mulder and Scully proud, stands up to slimeball FBI director Kersh, saying that he'll continue to investigate X-Files, even if it's the FBI itself that needs to be investigated.
Here's how I rank the episodes of the kinda great Season 8:
1. "Surekill" (episode 8) -- For the first time in the L.A. era, an episode won me over by how it looked and felt. I love the noir-meets-"Of Mice and Men" story about brothers, one who can barely see and the other who can see through walls. It even has a femme fatale: The girlfriend of the smarter brother who is the secret objective of affection of the dimmer, but sweeter, brother. Agents Scully and Doggett play second fiddle to the yarn here, which is rare but rather refreshing in this character-driven year.
2. "Medusa" (12) -- This is another throwback to the simpler Season 1 vibe as Doggett and a group of workers investigate a subway tunnel and its various offshoots into boarded-up tunnels and platforms. As with classics like "Ice" and "Darkness Falls," the monster here is tiny bacteria.
3-6. "Per Manum" (13)/"This is Not Happening" (14)/"Deadalive" (15)/"Three Words" (16) -- Rarely have viewers been so drawn in by the fates of Scully and Mulder as in these four episodes, where Scully fears she will give birth to an alien, Mulder returns but then dies, Mulder comes back to life but only because he's being transformed into an alien super solider, and finally, Mulder is healed thanks to a lucky break: Skinner tries to kill Mulder in order to save Scully's baby, as per Krycek's demand. Oh, and Doggett and Mulder meet, and Agent Reyes is introduced. It's quite a ride, and easier to follow than myth episodes from earlier seasons.
7-8. "Essence" (20)/"Existence" (21) -- Rarely have screeching car chases through parking garages been so exciting and stare-downs between characters who don't trust each other (Doggett vs. Adam Baldwin's Knowle Rohrer, Mulder vs. Krycek, etc.) been so engrossing. If Season 2's "Colony"/"Endgame" was a stylistic throwback to "The Terminator," then these episodes are akin to "Terminator 2," with alien-abductee-turned-super-solider Billy Miles standing in for the T-1000.
9. "Vienen" (18) -- It's a blast to see Duchovny and Patrick's acting chops paired up for the first time, and although the return of the black oil virus was kind of an unnecessary side trip, the setting on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig is awesome.
10. "Roadrunners" (4) -- I think of settings like this episode's off-the-map Utah desert town when I think of the L.A. years. I'm probably overestimating how many desert episodes there were, but that's partly because "Roadrunners" is so evocative. Scully is in a serious bind, trapped by small-town cultists who want to plant a parasitic slug messiah in her brain. She's no damsel in distress; she's simply outnumbered, but it's still satisfying when Doggett comes to the rescue and Scully realizes he's a good guy to have on her side.
11. "Patience" (3) -- In the first Scully-Doggett team-up, Scully struggles to fill Mulder's shoes. Scully's inability to make Mulder-esque leaps really does illustrate what a great character Mulder is. At the same time, the man-bat monster is cool, there's a strong guest turn by an old man who's been hiding from the creature for years, and by episode's end -- although we miss Mulder -- we realize we can comfortably go forward with the new partnership.
12. "Redrum" (6) -- For the first time in the show's run, an episode is handed off to a guest lead. Doggett and Scully are merely supporting characters in this "Twilight Zone"-y journey of a lawyer who is living his days backwards, starting with waking up in an orange jumpsuit in a prison cell. Joe Morton (yet another "Terminator 2" tie-in to Season 8) is one of the few actors who could pull this off.
13. "Alone" (19) -- Doggett is partnered with the gung-ho but somewhat gun-shy Agent Leyla Harrison (Jolie Jenkins), who had kept Mulder and Scully's travel records at the FBI and had always dreamed of working an X-File. Although we know as viewers that this partnership won't stick, "Alone" is still a solid MOTW with some nice moments. Mulder squares off with the human-salamander mutant like he did with Tooms back in Season 1. And in the final scene, Harrison asks Mulder and Scully how they got off Antarctica after escaping the spaceship. Even though M&S hem and haw until the credits roll, the fact that the writers acknowledge that pesky plot hole from the 1998 movie goes a long way toward soothing nitpicky fans.
14. "The Gift" (11) -- The idea that Mulder knew he was dying in Season 7 and secretly sought out a mystical healer never really clicked with me. Still, it does lead Doggett to find the mystical healer, who has to rank among the grossest, weirdest MOTWs due to his method of eating the ill person and then regurgitating them as good as new.
15. "Salvage" (9) -- If Doggett wasn't in the mix, this could totally pass for a Season 1 episode due to its intriguing silliness. The monster is an industrial worker who is gradually turning into a metal man (played by the burly prison guard from "Prison Break"). In one of those "of course" moments that is nonetheless satisfying, he ends up purposely crushing himself in a compactor at the end.
16. "Empedocles" (17) -- Doggett doesn't want Reyes opening up the case of his son's murder again based on her hunch. This is sort of a Season 9 sneak peak, as we get a sense of what drives Doggett and how Reyes likes to conduct investigations.
17. "Badlaa" (10) -- This episode's MOTW is memorable both for his look (a mute Indian little person with no legs who tools around on a squeaky cart) and his method of travel (he crawls inside a bigger person via their ... well, it's "The X-Files," so you can probably guess).
18-19. "Within" (1)/"Without" (2) -- The year starts off very much like a pilot episode for a spinoff as Doggett goes through the paces of learning about things like the alien rebel shapeshifter (who now looks like Mulder) and humans with alien DNA such as young Gibson Praise (last seen two years ago).
20. "Invocation" (5) -- I used to have a perception that the later-season episodes always ended without explanations, whereas the early season episodes let things play out. During my rewatching project, I've realized that's not entirely accurate. But here's the episode that gave me that perception: In "Invocation," a 7-year-old boy reappears 10 years after he goes missing, but he's still 7 years old. And no explanation for this is even attempted.
21. "Via Negativa" (7) -- Although it's a popular episode, this story of Doggett stuck in a dreamscape (or something like that) didn't totally work for me. However, it does have the nice touch of Scully saving him (by simply waking him up), so at this point both agents have saved each other once, and their partnership is off and running.
Where would you rank Season 8 among "X-Files" years? What were your favorite episodes? Share your thoughts below. Up next, I'll be revisiting "The Lone Gunmen," which aired during the second half of Season 8, and then it's on to the ninth and last season of the parent show.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 09 Apr 2011 04:17:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/4/9/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-8Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 7http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/3/19/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-7
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-7.jpg">
I remembered "The X-Files" Season 7 (1999-2000, Fox) as being a tired, going-through-the-motions year where David Duchovny wanted it all to end. I wasn't exactly right. Certainly, this is the weakest season of "The X-Files" up to this point, but separated from the news reports of whether Duchovny or the show itself would come back for an eighth season, it's clear that this is still a professional, high-quality show.
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There are several misfires in this season, but it's not because no one cared; it's because they tried to do too much. I imagine a checklist in "The X-Files" offices: Man with super good luck? Check. Genie? Check. A magician episode? Check. Bring back Donnie Pfaster? Check. Resolve this thing with Mulder's sister? Check.
But many episodes got made without everyone understanding what the tone should be. In too many episodes, I wondered, "Am I supposed to be taking this seriously?" The "X-Files" team intended to have fun in Season 7; unfortunately, the fun transfers to the viewer only about half the time. In Season 6, by comparison, I was totally onboard for the whole ride.
The most undeniable weakness of Season 7, though, is that the mythology sputters and runs out of gas. The mythology episodes noticeably lack the tension and gravity of previous years, and frankly, there just aren't as many of them -- only the season-opening two-parter and the finale are concerned with the current narrative (the Samantha Mulder two-parter is about tying up loose ends). I've criticized some mythology episodes in the past, but to be honest, I really missed them in Season 7. Good or bad, they have always given "The X-Files" a sense of momentum and importance.
On the positive side, Season 7 introduces us to a fourth type of "X-Files" episode (following monster-of-the-week, mythology and Darin Morgan-style comedy): The character piece. And it's actually two first-time writer-directors, actors Gillian Anderson and William B. Davis, who deliver the year's two best episodes: "all things," featuring Scully, and "En Ami," featuring the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
Characters are the saving grace of Season 7: Sure, the quality is uneven, but the series never loses sight of who it's characters are, what they stand for, and why we love them.
Here are my rankings of the 22 episodes:
1. "all things" (episode 17) -- It's been said that no one understands a character better than the actor who plays them, and Anderson's writing and directing debut is a case in point. She shows a knack for a thoughtful, independent-film approach to storytelling (note the scenes of Scully walking down the street as music plays). "all things" starts off memorably with Scully waking up at Mulder's place (no, it's not what you think, but still ...) and then flashes back to Scully reflecting on a life that could have been if she had settled down with her former professor in med school. In the bittersweet conclusion, she realizes she is where she wants to be, partnering with Mulder at the FBI.
2. "En Ami" (15) -- Davis explores the CSM as he takes Scully on a quest to acquire the alien cure for all human ailments. Understandably, Scully is wary -- secretly tape-recording everything -- but this is also a sympathetic portrayal of a lonely, ailing old man. He's not to be trusted, obviously, but I don't know if we can label him as pure evil, either. I'm still wondering about that ending, where the CSM tosses the disc with the cure into the lake.
3. "Requiem" (22) -- Even when the dying CSM attempts to strike a deal with the rebel aliens and start a new conspiracy, it seems like he's going through the motions. Also, I'm glad they're back, but: How did Covarrubias survive her black-oil infection and why was Krycek in a Tunisian prison? Did I sleep through an episode somewhere along the way? Still, it's nice to have the mythology jump-started as "Requiem" ends with four key developments: 1, Mulder is abducted by the rebel aliens; 2, Skinner sees the alien craft; 3, Krycek and Covarrubias kill the CSM by pushing him down a flight of stairs; and 4, Scully is inexplicably pregnant.
4. "Hungry" (3) -- This is a standard MOTW except that it's told from the perspective of the monster, who is quite sympathetic as he tries to control his hunger for human brains and Mulder knows what's going on the whole time. Weirdly, but not offensively, it has a comedic vibe -- there's that scene where the landlady's body is dumped into the garbage truck in the background, and I laugh every time the kid's stomach grumbles.
5. "Chimera" (16) -- I like the effect of the mirror shattering every time the raven-monster's reflection hits it. It's also amusing how Mulder is staying at a beautiful home with caring hosts while Scully is stuck on a scummy stakeout.
6. "Theef" (14) -- Great performances -- the creepy illiterate villain and the doctor who would go on to play Bill Buchanan on "24" -- gives this MOTW extra emotional punch.
7. "Brand X" (18) -- It's awesome to see "The X-Files" finally take on one of the scariest real-world villains: Powerful tobacco companies. And as a nicotine addict, Tobin Bell gives a soft-spoken, disturbing performance that might've earned him his star-making turn in the "Saw" franchise.
8. "The Amazing Maleeni" (8) -- "The X-Files" tries its hand at a pulpy mystery, and the exploration of the world of magic is fun, even if we're left with more questions than answers.
9. "Orison" (7) -- Considering that this marks the return of Nick Chinlund's Donnie Pfaster, the fan-favorite villain (all too human, although he might actually be the Devil incarnate) from Season 2's "Irresistible," it's too bad that the final act is almost identical: He traps Scully in her home. Still, it sets up the daring conclusion where Scully kills him in cold blood -- and feels she did the right thing.
10. "The Goldberg Variation" (6) -- In one if this season's many experimental "What if" episodes, we meet a guy who has nothing but good luck -- but he's miserable because his good fortune corresponds with bad breaks for other people.
11. "Hollywood A.D." (19) -- A notable step down from Duchovny's previous writing-directing effort, Season 6's "The Unnatural," this comedy about a filmmaker following Mulder and Scully as research for his movie (starring Gary Shandling as Mulder and Tea Leoni as Scully) doesn't land its punchlines, which are too obvious (Would Leoni go for a guy like Mulder?) or too strange (Shandling wonders if Mulder dresses to the left or to the right, which I'm guessing is a callback to a "Larry Sanders Show" joke). It has a poignant moment, though, as Mulder watches "Plan 9 from Outer Space" for the 42nd time and Scully says, "Doesn't that make you sad, Mulder? It makes me sad."
12. "Rush" (5) -- As a sucker for any horror story set in high school, I remembered loving "Rush," which has sort of a "Buffy" vibe. It's a decent concept, as a cave with alien powers serves as a metaphor for drug addiction, but the actor playing the villainous kid goes for camp value and it throws off the tone of the episode.
13 and 14. "Sein Und Zeit" (10)/"Closure" (11) -- If I'm understanding "Closure" correctly, Mulder's sister was first abducted by aliens, then briefly raised by the CSM, then abducted from the CSM by a human kidnapper, who also took the girl featured in "Sein Und Zeit," whose family is now ignored in "Closure" so Mulder cry over Samantha and gain closure. (In retrospect, "Sein Und Zeit" is a completely superfluous episode, and I'm ranking it here only for the sake of keeping this two-parter together.) At any rate, we're done with the Samantha thread, and I'm glad.
15 and 16. "The Sixth Extinction" (1)/"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" (2) -- Mulder, whose mind is sped up after he comes in contact with an alien artifact, might be the key providing a successful antidote against the coming alien virus. Not a bad plotline on paper, but this season-opener (continuing from Season 6's "Biogenesis") can't generate the momentum of earlier seasons' mythology. Mulder being laid out on a crucifix-shaped operating table is over the top, and the off-screen dispatching of Mimi Rogers' Agent Fowley -- who, for reasons never adequately explained, sided with the CSM -- is a case of the writers dumping a character they had no more use for.
17. "Je Souhaite" (21) -- Another "What if" entry gives Mulder three wishes from a genie. The ending is solid (Mulder wishes to free the genie), but first we have to wade through 40 minutes of humor-tinged prelude where two morons misuse their wishes and Scully is fascinated by an invisible body.
18. "First Person Shooter" (13) -- The second William Gibson/Tom Maddox entry is a big step down from Season 5's outstanding "Kill Switch." The concept of a video game character coming to life isn't terrible (although it makes no logical sense), but in the end, we're just watching Mulder and Scully play a video game, and I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be funny or deadly serious. I don't think Anderson or Duchovny knew, either.
19. "Millennium" (4) -- At the end of this zombie-themed episode, Frank Black (Lance Henrickson) from "Millennium" -- which was canceled the year before -- is reunited with his daughter and gets to break his broodiness with a smile. I haven't watched the other Chris Carter series (I intend to rectify that someday, as the first two of the three seasons are apparently outstanding), but I've read that Henrickson wasn't thrilled with this episode, and I agree that it isn't great.
20. "X-Cops" (12) -- An "X-Files" episode shot in the style of "Cops." It's executed well -- complete with boom at the top of the frame -- but I got the joke right away and then kind of wished I were watching the story in "The X-Files" style again.
21. "Fight Club" (20) -- The tone suggests this is supposed to be a comedy -- people start fighting each other whenever twins played by Kathy Griffin enter the same room -- but I just wasn't laughing.
22. "Signs & Wonders" (9) -- This failure highlights something "The X-Files" normally does so well: It avoids repeating itself. But this is a familiar "crazy religious people who might be onto something" yarn, and the final twist, although surprising, isn't earned. Also, some gross-outs are fun, but some are just gross, and a woman giving birth to snakes falls into the latter category.
What were your favorite episodes from Season 7? Is it the worst season of "The X-Files" up to this point, or am I underrating it? Share your thoughts below.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:52:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/3/19/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-7Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 6http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/2/26/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-6
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-6.jpg">
The cool thing about rewatching DVDs of classic shows years later is having my perceptions changed. In my head, I thought Season 6 of "The X-Files" (1998-99, Fox) was an experimental year that marked the start of the series' downfall. After watching these 22 episodes, I believe it's the show's best season up to this point.
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Although almost every episode is an outside-the-box, indirect descendant of Darin Morgan's three Season 3 episodes, "experimental" isn't the right word. That implies trial-and-error, but Season 6 is almost entirely trial-and-success. Sure, the move to Los Angeles meant the visuals wouldn't be as coolly murky as in Vancouver, but it's a fair trade-off when the trip down the coast reinvigorates the writers and lead actors.
The neatest thing I noticed when rewatching Season 6 is that Chris Carter handled Mulder and Scully's unrequited, understated love exactly right. Sure, it was a slow-burning relationship compared to the real world, where such things rarely take this long to develop. But once you accept that their "courtship" did unfold over seven years, you couldn't ask for a much more beautiful, subtle romance (at least up to this point).
We get cute moments in several episodes: A novelist observes that Scully can't be a romantic lead because she is already in love ("Milagro") and a small-town Kansan observes the same about Mulder ("The Rain King"). Mulder teaches Scully how to hit a baseball ("The Unnatural"), the FBI partners go undercover as husband and wife ("Arcadia"), and comically, when "Mulder" tries to seduce Scully, her suspicions that he has been body-switched are confirmed ("Dreamland II").
Also, five years and one movie worth of mythology finally reach a crescendo when the Syndicate members (except the Cigarette-Smoking Man, natch) are killed by the rebel aliens in "Two Fathers" and "One Son." Later, "Biogenesis" starts the "Are we all descended from aliens?" mythology that will carry into later seasons.
Whether that paid off or not is a question for my posts on Seasons 7 through 9. For now, let's revel in the genius that is Season 6, with my rankings of the 22 episodes.
1. "Tithonus" (episode 9) -- Of all the sci-fi themes that are literally impossible, eternal life might be the most fascinating, perhaps because it stands 180 degrees removed from the certainty of death, another popular theme. The quiet horror of living forever has never been portrayed with more beautiful sadness than here, in an episode I don't know how to pronounce, thanks to the soft-spoken, hauntingly tired turn by Geoffrey Lewis as Alfred Fellig, who photographs people on the verge of dying in hopes that Death will finally claim him.
2. "Milagro" (18) -- Again, a guest performer steals the show: This time it's John Hawkes as Phillip Padgett, Mulder's neighbor whose typewritten novel creates reality. As such, Gillian Anderson takes Scully into new territory as she gives in to Padgett's advances against her better judgment.
3. "The Unnatural" (20) -- Writer-director David Duchovny delivers a gorgeous love letter to both the "X-Files" mythology and baseball, and Jessie L. Martin gives a performance as alien Negro Leagues slugger Josh Exley that stuck with me throughout Martin's comparatively bland years on "Law & Order." And if Exley playing for the Roswell Greys doesn't put a smile on your face, "The X-Files" isn't your type of show.
4. "Arcadia" (13) -- Not only does this episode put Mulder and Scully undercover as a married couple (leading to domestic scenes such as Mulder reacting in horror to Scully's green beauty mask), but it also shows that X-Files can take place in gated suburban communities just as they can in steamy urban slums. In many ways, suburbia is creepier.
5. "S.R. 819" (10) -- As with the previous two Skinner-centric episodes, this one is a winner as Krycek (as we find out in the final scene) infects the assistant director with nanobots that can kill him -- or stay benign if Skinner does his bidding. It's a strong mythology ep that sets the stage for future Krycek manipulations.
6. "Field Trip" (21) -- This was the Season 6 ep I most looked forward to rewatching, because I remembered liking it but not understanding what happened. It has something to do an underground plant that gives our heroes distracting hallucinations as it slowly digests them Sarlacc-pit-style. The Philip K. Dick vibe, where some things are real and some aren't, makes it a classic.
7. "The Rain King" (7) -- Like many of this season's episodes, "The Rain King" uses an unexplained phenomenon as a jumping point for a decidedly non-spooky story (which is why this ep and the season as a whole have some detractors). This quirky, small-town love story put a smile on my face for the entire 44 minutes.
8. "Three of a Kind" (19) -- This sequel is the equal to Season 5's "Unusual Suspects," as the Lone Gunmen once again prove they deserve their own series (I love Langly's reaction to Scully's autopsy) and Anderson again gets to stretch her acting chops when Scully is dosed with a drug that takes away her inhibitions (she calls Langly "cutey").
9/10. "Two Fathers" (11) and "One Son" (12) -- Anyone with complaints that the mythology was unclear had to appreciate this conclusive two-parter, which features a scene of Cassandra outlining the different types of aliens and their goals to Mulder behind a bank of medical equipment.
11/12. "Dreamland" (4) and "Dreamland II" (5) -- On my first viewing of this body-switch two-parter, I thought it was odd that we as viewers could see who the characters actually are (Duchovny as Mulder, Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher), thus precluding the opportunity for Duchovny to play someone else, as he did in Season 4's "Small Potatoes." While I'm still not sure it was the right choice, I still like the episodes, especially how Scully has to embrace the paranormal truth (a big theme of this season) in order to set things right.
13. "Alpha" (16) -- It's similar to Season 1's "Shapes," but it's superior because the shapeshifter is darn creepy in its form as a Chinese dog with glowing red eyes. And I'm a sucker for any story (see "The Relic") that begins with an empty crate on a ship and a creature loose in the city.
14. "The Beginning" (1) -- The season opener answers one of the nagging questions from the movie as we see the chest-bursting alien (sorry, but the "Alien" parallel is hard to deny) morph into a grey alien. With a story set in sunny, hot Phoenix, Season 6 definitively says, "Yes, we're shooting in L.A. now." It's not necessarily better than Vancouver, but this is still very much "The X-Files," so many worried fans probably breathed a sigh of relief after this episode aired.
15. "Biogenesis" (22) -- The season finale is a pilot episode of sorts for the final three years as Mulder gets headaches when he's exposed to an artifact that has Native American writing, was discovered in Africa, and probably came from aliens. It ends with Scully finding a buried flying saucer, thus putting a period on her days as a nonbeliever.
16. "Monday" (15) -- The plot, where Mulder repeats the same day and gradually absorbs information that will allow him to foil a bomber, is a more dramatic riff on "Groundhog Day." Adding humor are the scenes of Mulder waking up in his leaky waterbed, which Morris bought in "Dreamland," and Mulder figures was an anonymous gift.
17. "Agua Mala" (14) -- The wettest episode of the series finds M&S investigating a sea creature in a Florida hurricane. It's the first episode after Kersh reinstates the duo to the X-Files (which didn't stop them from investigating X-Files in the first 13 episodes, but still ...). It's nice to get back to basics (although the episode's tone is slightly whimsical) and it's nice to see Darren McGavin's Arthur Dales (from Season 5's "Travelers") again.
18. "Triangle" (3) -- The most technically ambitious episode of the series features long tracking shots as a time-traveling Mulder traverses a World War II ship being overtaken by Nazis and Scully pounds through the FBI building looking for someone with information. It's unclear how much of this episode was real and how much was in Mulder's head (obviously, the Nazi leader wouldn't look exactly like the CSM). Ultimately, the hospital bed scene of Mulder telling Scully he loves her makes this a winner for 'shippers like me.
19. "Trevor" (17) -- Showing that they haven't exhausted all paranormal possibilities yet, the writers invent a guy who can walk through walls. As an escaped convict who just wants to meet his son, John Diehl plays one of the series scariest humans.
20. "Terms of Endearment" (6) -- After five outside-the-box episodes, it seemed like "The X-Files" was getting back to basics with a story about a demon named Wayne (Bruce Campbell) claiming human babies. And yet, there are twists and oddities (Mulder racing Wayne in a sports car) that show this isn't a traditional monster-of-the-week outing.
21. "Drive" (2) -- The conversations between Mulder and Crump (Bryan Cranston) make this a decent character piece, as Mulder meets someone even more paranoid about the government than he is. Riffing on "Speed," Mulder has to drive fast to keep Crump's head from exploding.
22. "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" (8) -- In a haunted house, Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin play ghosts, but the real horror for our heroes is how the ghosts expose their flaws and deepest secrets. It also has that cute final scene where M&S exchange presents even though they promised they wouldn't. Even though I rank it last on this list, this is a worthy entry for annual Christmas viewing.
What were your favorite episodes of Season 6? Where does it rank in comparison to other seasons? Share your thoughts below.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:55:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/2/26/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-6Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘The X-Files: Fight the Future’http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-Fight-the-Future
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I enjoyed watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120902/" target="_blank">"The X-Files: Fight the Future"</a> (1998) more on this viewing than on previous viewings. I think my method of watching the episodes in order, at a fairly brisk clip, and not dwelling too much on the details of the mythology is paying off.
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The biggest revelation on my "rewatching 'The X-Files'" project has been the subtle (but clear in retrospect) love story between Mulder and Scully. The whole series can play as a romance if you choose to look at it that way, and the first movie can too. Sure, when M&S worry about being split up, they are ostensibly worried about the end of their fruitful working partnership on the X-Files. Sure, when Mulder tells Scully she makes him complete, he's ostensibly talking about his role as an investigator. Sure, when Mulder goes to the end of the Earth to save her life, it's ostensibly what he would do for any friend.
But I don't think it's a coincidence that these scenes can be read in a romantic way as well. In retrospect, it's a cool feat that Chris Carter wrote the relationship to appeal to both romantics and those who appreciated the partners' working relationship. (Although, granted, the near kiss in the hallway -- stopped only by Scully getting stung by a bee -- does paint them as more than just co-workers.)
Speaking of serving dual masters, "Fight the Future" also aimed to appeal to both fans and non-fans, as I learned from the interviews with Carter and Frank Spotnitz on the "making of" featurette included on the DVD. I always find it odd when long-running shows worry about appealing to new viewers; I think they'd be better off appealing to loyal viewers, because 1, new viewers will feel like outsiders no matter what you do, and 2, nothing was stopping new viewers from catching the show in syndication back in 1998 or from watching it on DVD or various web options today.
I guess the movie achieves its goal (although like I say, there's no reason for this to be your entry point into the series; just start from the beginning). I've mentioned in previous posts that the mythology episodes are often variations on established themes rather than radical advancements of the story (hence the complaints back in the day about it being slow-moving, although it plays much better when watching the DVDs). In a way, the movie offers nothing new; it just tells the same old story with a bigger budget.
The biggest developments are:
• The black oil includes a more virulent strain than we've known so far: When this latest version infects someone, it grows a monster-alien in the humans' belly a la "Alien."
• The Syndicate has succeeded in developing a vaccine. This is how Mulder is able to save Scully. But it's a "weak" vaccine, so it can only cure people in the early stages of infection.
• The black oil can be transmitted by bee stings. We already saw this when it was tested using polio in Season 4's "Zero Sum," but now we see it put into action with the black oil.
• The Well-Manicured Man is killed (presumably by one of his higher-ups) after giving Mulder a vial of the weak vaccine and the coordinates of Scully's location.
Otherwise, like I say, it's just Mulder and Scully being put through their paces again, only this time there are "film actors" aboard (Martin Landau is a Deep Throat-like informant, Blythe Danner is one of the FBI higher-ups who interrogates Scully and Armin Mueller-Stahl is the Syndicate's leader) and huge set pieces (a building blows up in Dallas, M&S are chased through a corn field by helicopters and Mulder goes to Antarctica to rescue Scully from a gestation pod in a buried alien spacecraft).
I don't mean to disparage the hard work the filmmakers did on those sets and sequences, but I think sometimes they overestimate how crucial size is to the quality of the picture. What's memorable about "Fight the Future" is the hallway scene where Mulder tells Scully how much she means to him, and the spaceship-escape sequence where -- wrapped around each others' shoulders -- they help each other to keep moving. When I see the vast interior of the alien craft or the explosion of the Dallas building or the huge bee arena, I tend to think, "Oh, they made it extra-big because they had more time and money."
On the other hand, all that big stuff doesn't detract from the movie by any means, and I kind of appreciate that "Fight the Future" has a blockbuster feel to it since 1998 was the height of "The X-Files" popularity and the revelations here serve as a de facto climax to the mythology arc that would mostly be wrapped up in Season 6's "Two Fathers" / "One Son." Basically, the story is big enough that it earns the right to be played big.
Still, as the decidedly lower-budget second movie (2008's "I Want to Believe") emphasized, "The X-Files" is at its heart the story of Mulder and Scully. At the end of the day -- even if viewers aren't totally clear on the black oil, the bees and the colonization plans (although they should be, if they've been paying attention) -- the stories of the heart are what make "Fight the Future" work, too.
MoviesX-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sun, 02 Jan 2011 23:34:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-The-XFiles-Fight-the-FutureRewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 5http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-5
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files-season-5.jpg">
"The X-Files" fifth season (1997-98, Fox) is one big appetizer for the main course -- "X-Files: Fight the Future," which would hit movie theaters in the summer of 1998 and presumably give epic answers to those nagging mythology questions.
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Indeed, Season 5 offers a lot to nibble on, but it's not a satisfying meal in its own right. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, presumably a bit burned out after shooting the movie in the summer of '97, hand off the ball a lot this season ("Unusual Suspects" and "Travelers" flash back to other characters and don't include Scully at all, and Mulder takes off most of "Christmas Carol" and "Chinga"). Even the writing staff brings in sci-fi greats Stephen King and William Gibson for an episode apiece.
And while some mythology developments were interesting at the time -- Mulder believes all alien stories were invented by the government, and Scully discovers she has a daughter -- they were ultimately detours from the primary thread of the mythology. The most unnecessary side trip was the notion that the Cigarette-Smoking Man was dead. He wasn't, and he came back to resume his old job without much incident (other than killing one of the guys sent to retrieve him).
On this viewing of the DVDs, I was surprised by how experimental Season 5 is. I had remembered Season 6 is being the year when "The X-Files" really went outside the box, but Season 5 is rife with such episodes; only about five of the 20 episodes are old-fashioned monster-of-the-weeks.
Season 5 marks the beginning of a gradual downward slide for the show, in the sense that it will never again be as good as Seasons 3 and 4 (however, I don't believe Seasons 6 through 9 are as bad as their reputation). It's also the last year the show filmed in Vancouver (the first movie and the last four seasons were filmed in Los Angeles, although the second movie returned to Vancouver). It's also worth noting that Chris Carter had originally planned for the show to last five years.
So when we arrive at the last episode, "The End," it does indeed feel like the end of an era, even though we knew even then that "The X-Files" would be back in the fall (the Syndicate-centered mythology arc would be wrapped up in mid-Season 6, and then a fresh mythology arc would begin). Season 5 stands as a respectable, albeit hard-to-pin-down, final year of the Vancouver era. But like I say, many episodes whetted my appetite for rewatching "Fight the Future."
Here are my Season 5 episode rankings:
1. "Unusual Suspects" (1) -- This episode aired in 1997 and "The Lone Gunmen" premiered in 2001, yet this is essentially a pilot episode for that series, as we go back to 1989 and learn how the Gunmen got together. We also learn how Mulder's belief in government conspiracies got started. (He was interested in alien abduction since he saw his sister get abducted when he was a kid, but he never really suspected government involvement until the events of this episode.)
2. "Bad Blood" (12) -- Many fans rank this as their favorite episode of the entire series, and I can't blame them. It starts with Mulder staking a human who he thinks is a vampire, and saying "Oh, sh--" just as the opening credits kick in. But rather than a lot of silliness, the episode ends up being a spot-on examination of the phenomenon of point-of-view; we see the events from Scully's perspective, with all of her biases (Mulder is always calling on her to do autopsies, and the sheriff -- played by Luke Wilson -- is pretty good looking), then from Mulder's perspective, with all of his biases (Scully is whiny about his autopsy requests, and the sheriff has buck teeth).
3. "Kill Switch" (11) -- The idea of a satellite weapon with pinpoint targeting capability was scary when guest writers William Gibson and Tom Maddox wrote this, and it still is 13 years later. The episode, featuring the eye-black-sporting computer genius Invisigoth (Kristin Lehman) -- on whom the Lone Gunmen develop a crush -- boasts Gibson's cyberpunk trappings (including a killer virtual reality device, something he would revisit in Season 7's less-respected "First Person Shooter") but still feels like an X-File. This is the only time in Season 5 when it feels like "The X-Files" is doing a totally fresh MOTW story.
4. "The End" (20) -- It has big mythology moments: the Syndicate taps the CSM for help again, the CSM tells Agent Spender he's his father, a young boy named Gibson Praise might have the brainpower to explain all paranormal phenomenon, and Mulder's office goes up in flames (leaving a noticeable whiff of Morleys behind). But I like "The End" for the cute Mulder-Scully stuff that comes via Gibson reading the agents' minds and Scully being threatened (though she'd never admit it) by the presence of Mulder's old flame Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers). There's a scene where Scully, having seen Mulder and Fowley talking in private, retreats to her car to call Mulder back to the office; I was thinking (in a playground sing-song voice) "Scully loves Mulder, Scully loves Mulder."
5 and 6. "Redux I" and "Redux II" (2 and 3) -- Influenced by a compelling tale from government agent Michael Kritschgau and his trip to find a supposed alien corpse in the Yukon, Mulder does a 180 and comes to believe that all stories of aliens were planted by the government. With a tip from the CSM, he returns the chip to Scully's neck, thus curing her cancer. It's refreshing to have Scully healthy again at the end of this epic trilogy (which started with the Season 4 finale, "Gethsemane").
7 and 8. "Patient X" and "The Red and the Black" (13 and 14) -- At this point, Mulder still staunchly believes that aliens are a government creation, so this ends up being a classic flip-the-script episode when Scully is present for not only the alien abduction of Cassandra Spender, but also the murders of many chip-implanted innocents by torch-wielding killers with no facial features. The faceless aliens are rivals of the grays, with whom the Syndicate is in league. But not entirely in league: The Well-Manicured Man wants to hold onto a faceless alien captive as a bargaining chip and also see if a cure for the black oil will work on the unfortunate Marita Covarrubias, who had backstabbed poor Alex Krycek. Also, we meet Agent Spender, who we immediately suspect will be the son of the CSM since he is played by Chris Owens, who played the young CSM in Season 4's "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man."
Whew! Up to this point, there hasn't been a more information-packed mythology two-parter, and for the most part, I was able to follow along.
9 and 10. "Christmas Carol" and "Emily" (5 and 7) -- This is a Gillian Anderson acting showcase as she becomes attached to an orphaned girl named Emily and then finds out that she is her mother. Emily, who came into being so the Conspiracy could experiment on her (or something like that), dies in the end, but she will stay in Scully's thoughts and prayers. This two-parter is more of a diversion than crucial mythology viewing, but it works.
11. "Chinga" (10) -- It's co-written by Stephen King, but the best part of this episode is what I presume to be Chris Carter's contribution: the asides showing Mulder, who -- like a rowdy kid -- is dribbling his basketball in his living room and throwing pencils at the ceiling in impatience while Scully is on vacation. The other half of the joke is that Scully doesn't end up getting a true vacation experience in Maine (other than one bubble bath), because the local sheriff keeps asking for her help in the case of a killer kid and/or killer doll. We see that Mulder and Scully are both doomed to never be able to relax, but for different reasons.
12. "Travelers" (15) -- "Travelers" flashes back to 1990, when Mulder, merely an FBI profiler at the time, interviews former agent Arthur Dales (Darren McGavin) about an alleged communist who turned out to be a monster. Most of the episode shows the case unfolding during the McCarthyism era, but "Travelers" is fondly remembered for its framing device featuring voice-overs by McGavin, whose presence brought full-circle the connection between "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and its superior, but indebted, progeny.
13. "Folie a Deux" (19) -- It starts off as a standard crazy-hostage-taker yarn until Mulder realizes, like in Season 2's "Duane Barry," that the guy isn't crazy: His boss truly is a monster, and many of his co-workers actually are zombies. Due to the monster, I had remembered this as a ripoff of the "Buffy" episode "Teacher's Pet," but on this viewing I realized that it is an important episode for establishing where these characters are at this point. Mulder is back in believer mode, and Scully still plays the skeptic, but -- as indicated when she finally sees the monster -- she has come a long way since the series started.
14. "Detour" (4) -- This is a second-rate attempt to duplicate Season 3's "Quagmire," as Mulder and Scully get stranded in the Florida forest at night. Still, I do love Scully's flirty line about how maybe it will start raining sleeping bags and he'll get lucky.
15. "The Pine Bluff Variant" (18) -- "The X-Files" shows its versatility as Mulder goes undercover, and gets his pinky broken in an interrogation, in an episode that plays more like a Jack Bauer mission on "24." Of course, it is rich with the government conspiracy (here, the U.S. is secretly developing a chemical weapon) that paints it as an "X-Files" episode.
16. "All Souls" (17) -- This is one of those flip-the-script religion-themed episodes. Scully plays the believer and other characters (even her priest!) are skeptical that she's seeing a spooky angel come down to claim the souls of handicapped quadruplets. It serves as a coda for Scully's all-too-brief experience as Emily's mother.
17. "Schizogeny" (9) -- It has strong performances by two teen actors and creepy orchard cinematography; also, I don't mind the story about a psychologist going too far in telling her patients to fight back against their oppressors. Yet Duchovny and Anderson don't seem fully engaged here, so the episode falls flat.
18. "Mind's Eye" (16) -- Lili Taylor gives a much-praised performance as a blind girl who is arrested for murder. Like in Season 3's "Oubliette," Mulder is the only one who believes she is innocent, and the whole episode is about his struggle to get her to tell the truth. It's a solid episode, but it ranks low on my list because there's not much mystery about where the plot is going.
19. "Kitsunegari" (8) -- I'm not a big fan of Season 3's beloved "Pusher," and this sequel -- Pusher escapes from prison, but (inexplicably) it's just to tell his twin sister with identical mind-control powers to stop killing -- is a step down from that.
20. "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (6) -- Some people rank this as their very favorite episode of the series. It has some elements that have made other episodes great -- the use of old pop standards as in-scene music, the exploration of a misunderstood monster -- and it stands out as the only episode shot in black and white. Also, it opens as a comic book cover and closes as a final comic-book panel, so style points abound. But I have to be honest: It doesn't come together into a satisfying finished product.
How would you rank the episodes in the fifth season of "The X-Files?"
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sun, 02 Jan 2011 16:18:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2011/1/2/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-5Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 4http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/12/18/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-4
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Ideally for the business people behind the networks, TV series would be written in such a way that they could stay on the air forever. This is why sitcoms are popular with networks; people can start watching at any time without feeling lost. It's also why a beginning-middle-end story -- the "X-Files" mythology for example -- is a problem. How can you build toward an ending when you don't know if the show is going to be on the air for one, five or 10 more years?
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If "The X-Files" story had been told without the business of TV lurking behind it, Season 4 would've been the road toward resolution. However, Chris Carter decided to milk the mythology in order to drag out the story out, and Season 4 (1996-97, Fox) is the year of treading water. We learn that the government conspirators are breeding bees and the Russians are experimenting with the alien black oil, and that's about it.
And yet, almost in spite of themselves, these are some of the best mythology episodes of the series. The notes are the same as before, but they've never before been played so expertly. There's a stylistic grandeur to it all, and I think Laurie Holden's performance as new character Marita Covarrubius is a case in point. Holden plays the latest in the line of Mulder's informants in a film-noir femme fatale fashion, and I love the over-the-top acting choice.
When you're covering the same territory, you can get away with it only if you do it better than before, and Season 4 does, making the old seem new again. It begins slowly (and disappointingly, considering how good Season 3 was), but starting with the 10th episode to air, "Paper Hearts," it delivers a string of stories that are deeply in touch with who Mulder and Scully are and what "The X-Files" is all about.
It's clear Carter and company are stretching this thing out, and that it's a business decision rather than a story decision. I'm more or less OK with that. This show is often so fun to watch in Season 4 that I want them to stretch it out forever.
Trivia time: This is the first season where the airdates don't match up with the production dates, so depending on which episode guide you're using, you'll find different numbering. I decided to number the episodes based on production order (which is also the chronological order), even though I watched them in airdate order (which is also the DVD order).
Here are my rankings of the 24 episodes in Season 4:
1. "Zero-Sum" (episode 21) -- Roughly the first 10 minutes is just Skinner cleaning up a crime scene. The whole hour, which we see through Skinner's eyes, is palpably intense, and it rewards regular viewers who know the assistant director is doing this because he made a deal with the Devil (the CSM) to save Scully. It's kind of funny to see how Mulder being so good at his job is a thorn in his boss' side here. That confrontation where CSM says "Unless you plan to kill me, I'd like to answer my phone" is William B. Davis at his finest. And Mitch Pileggi proves that a theoretical Skinner spinoff would be very watchable.
2. "Never Again" (13) -- "It's not always about you, Mulder," Scully says. This episode is a personal journey for Scully, with Mulder only appearing in amusing asides as he visits Graceland (he hadn't taken a day off in four years and his bosses demanded he take a vacation). Scully goes on a date and, although we know by now that she and Mulder are meant to be together, it's interesting to see her with another guy and operating outside her work-centered comfort zone. (Of course, the episode ends up being work-related anyway when Scully has to scientifically explain mind-controlling tattoos.)
3. "Memento Mori" (15) -- I had remembered this episode as being boring, but this time around I really liked it. The "Scully gets cancer" plotline seems contrived, but because we know from the beginning that the Cigarette-Smoking Man has the power to save her, there's an earned intensity to the entire thread. What makes this episode great is that Mulder is immediately by Scully's side ("I refuse to accept that," he says when informed that her cancel is fatal) and that Scully writes in her journal to Mulder -- when he reads it, she is embarrassed, claiming she was going to throw it out.
4. "Paper Hearts" (8) -- An outstanding guest turn by Tom Noonhan as the abductor of 14 girls drives this episode; he makes John Lee Roche creepy by so matter-of-factly discussing his crimes. There's also an intensity to the way Mulder tracks the clues, hoping to discover the identity of the 14th girl -- is it Samantha? We never find out, but that's OK, because this episode is a prime example of the journey being more enjoyable than the destination.
5. "Small Potatoes" (20) -- It starts off as a mediocre example of writer Vince Gilligan doing a Darin Morgan impression, but the last is awesome. David Duchovny performs as Eddie Van Blundht in Mulder's body, and it's incredibly cute the way Scully opens up to this wine-toting Mulder, one who actually wants to talk -- "really talk" -- with her. "Small Potatoes" is a successful examination of how the way a person looks on the outside can overshadow who they are on the inside; it's not a typical "X-Files" theme, but I like it.
6. "Gethsemane" (24) -- This gripping season finale features a cliffhanger where Scully tells one of those panels of officious people in a dimly lit conference room (an "X-Files" staple) that she had identified Mulder's body earlier that day; he had apparently killed himself, distraught by the news that all evidence of extraterrestrial life was engineered by a government conspiracy. Logically, we know Mulder's not dead (that would ruin the show) and we know it's not all a hoax (that would likewise ruin the show), yet this episode works.
7 and 8. "Tempus Fugit" (17) and "Max" (18) -- It's just another case of Mulder almost getting his hands on evidence of ETs before the government sweeps in and covers it up. (He finds a UFO and its pilot underwater but he's almost immediately apprehended.) Nonetheless, this two-parter works as a character piece about Max Fenig (introduced in Season 1's "Fallen Angel"), who is like a civilian version of Mulder and Scully rolled into one (conspiracy nut/alien abductee). The trick is especially neat because we only see Max in flashbacks and on a recording.
9. "Leonard Betts" (14) -- It has that classic reveal that Scully has cancer -- "I'm sorry, but you have something I need," the cancer-eating Betts tells her. But it's also a tightly structured human-with-a-genetic-quirk episode (see also "Squeeze," "2Shy" and "Teliko") featuring great scenes such as Mulder walking into a bathroom, not knowing the creature lurks in the iodine-filled tub.
10. "Demons" (23) -- We've seen how much Mulder cares for the cancer-addled Scully; here we get to see Scully take care of Mulder. First, she warms him up with towels and blankets, and later she plays de-facto lawyer to Mulder, who is accused of murder. Mulder -- and we -- aren't sure of his innocence (he is, after all, receiving visions that he has no control over), but Scully never wavers.
11. "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" (7) -- This ep is apocryphal in the sense that the CSM probably didn't really kill JFK and MLK. By the final act -- when the title character is telling his secretary to put Saddam Hussein on hold and he instructs his underlings that the Bills must never win a Super Bowl -- it's clear that this is a parody of sorts. Yet the exploration of this character is genuine even if the details aren't. Also, it has that great monologue where the CSM, having experienced the failure of his dream to become a novelist, starts with "Life is like a box of chocolates" and proceeds in the opposite direction from the Forrest Gump speech.
12. "Sanguinarium" (6) -- Every episode on this list so far has been an outside-the-box entry with the exception of "Leonard Betts," but even that one is known more for how it affects Scully's life. I like "Sanguinarium" because it's pure monster-of-the-week goodness about plastic surgeons being possessed and violently killing their patients. It makes no sense whatsoever (for one thing, wouldn't news of the first killing cause a surge in appointment cancellations?), but I count this as a guilty pleasure.
13. "Home" (3) -- Although I don't love this famously banned-by-Fox episode as much as some people, I admit that it's possibly the most disgusting X-File ever. M&S discover an inbred family living outside a small town that keeps their limbless matriarch on a rolling cart under a bed. It's also extremely violent, and the soundtrack's use of "Wonderful, Wonderful" underscores the creepiness. It's a classic episode, but I'm glad there's only one "Home" in the "X-Files" pantheon.
14 and 15. "Tunguska" (9) and "Terma" (10) -- The black oil is reinvented here as something that can kill its victims; previously it only possessed them. That's not necessarily contradictory storytelling, but it does strike me as a bit sloppy. This two-parter is dire, with Mulder stuck in a Russian prison and Krycek getting his arm cut off. The framing device of Scully stalling for time when she's called before Congress is melodramatic time-filler.
16-21. "Elegy" (22), "El Mundo Gira" (11), "Kaddish" (12), "Unruhe" (2), "Synchrony" (19), "Teliko" (4) -- Here are six imperfect but enjoyable MOTWs. They don't add anything new to "The X-Files," but I enjoyed these episodes as I watched the DVDs. They function as breathers between the emotional character episodes and intense mythology hours.
22. "Unrequited" (16) -- Often "The X-Files" just barely crams its story into 44 minutes; this padded episode is a notable exception. With an invisible Vietnam POW as the MOTW, it revisits the theme from Season 3's "The Walk." And the opening and closing sequences where the agents track the invisible man are identical; a little bit of a flash-forward teaser is one thing, but so much is re-shown here that the suspense is lost.
23. "Herrenvolk" (1) -- Season 3 ended with Jeremiah Smith promising to tell Mulder "everything." As the story resumes, he says he'd rather SHOW Mulder everything. Fair enough, but then Smith shows him clones (of Samantha and other kids) and drones (as in bees). As viewers, we aren't given the slightest clue what this means. (Later, in "Zero-Sum," we find out that the bees are delivery devices for smallpox, which the Conspiracy unleashes on humans as a test to see if they can deliver something else with the bees. Or something like that.) This is a prime example of "answers" leading to more questions, but not necessarily in a good way.
24. "The Field Where I Died" (5) -- This episode where Mulder (who may have lived a past life) connects with a cult member (or perhaps her past life) is confusing and hard to watch. It's such a misfire that I want to like it in order to be a contrarian. But I just can't do it; this is clearly the worst episode of an otherwise great season.
How would you rank Season 4's episodes? Share your thoughts in the comment thread below.
P.S. More trivia: In another example of how "The X-Files" had begun to milk its mythology, the first "X-Files" movie was filmed in the summer after Season 4. Then came all of Season 5, and then the movie was released. Because the mythology was progressing in a slow, piecemeal fashion, it wasn't a problem to shoot the story so drastically out of sequence.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 18 Dec 2010 13:41:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/12/18/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-4Rewatching and reviewing the classics: 'X-Files' Season 3http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/25/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-3
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//mulder-scully2.jpg">
Season 3 was when "The X-Files" became the show that I now picture in my head when I fondly daydream about "The X-Files." Gone for the most part are the endearingly clunky episodes where the writers and directors were finding their footing; in Season 3 (1995-96, Fox), the show became a well-oiled machine.
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In the first stand-alone of the season, for example, Mulder and Scully are immediately on the case of a lightning boy in Oklahoma; we skip the part where Mulder has a slideshow in the office and they drive a rental car along back roads. And although I prefer earlier mythology episodes, Season 3 was when Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz found their recipe for longevity, if not a satisfying big picture -- keep adding to the pot (a tape proving the government's awareness of aliens, experiments on humans with alien DNA, alien black oil that can control humans, and an internal war among the shapeshifting aliens). Add ingredients, stir, simmer; but don't bring to a boil, at least not for a few more years.
Mulder had always been Mulder, the guy who wants to believe. But where did Scully fit into that? In Season 3, it became clear that she would always be at Mulder's side -- this is especially clear in "War of the Coprophages," where she's dozing with the phone by her side, waiting for Mulder's next update on his investigation, and "Quagmire," where she accompanies Mulder on a hurry-up-and-pack weekend case that probably could've been handled by regular law enforcement.
Season 3 was when Mulder and Scully's love for each other became clear (at least on my chronological viewing of the DVD; I admit that I wasn't aware of it back when I watched random reruns). It also became clear that Skinner was a trusted ally, that X's inside source was the Cigarette Smoking Man himself, and that Krycek was an intriguing wild card.
"The X-Files' " third season also tread outside the box in three notable cases: The Darin Morgan episodes (his only three episodes after Season 2's "Humbug") that put a humorous, satirical bent on the show's touchstones. Upon rewatching these eps, I found that I like "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," I love "War of the Coprophages" and I appreciate "Jose Chung's From Outer Space."
Still, I'm a monster-of-the-week guy, and it's those episodes that make this the show's most consistently good season (and besides, without "normal" episodes, there would be nothing for Morgan to comment on).
It was harder for me to rank Season 3's episodes compared to the first two seasons, which actually had bad episodes that I could easily relegate to the bottom, but here goes:
1. "Quagmire" (22) -- It's arguably the greatest Mulder-Scully non-romance romance story, starting with how she accompanies him on this wild goose chase, even bringing her (doomed) dog Queequeg along due to the late notice. It has great natural scenery of the Georgia forest and lake (and for once, Vancouver stands in for the South effectively), and it's highlighted by the famous long dialogue where M&S get to know each other as they're stranded on a rock in the middle of the lake. The final shot of Big Blue, which confirms that Mulder isn't crazy to believe after all, puts a tidy bow on the whole package.
2. "Grotesque" (14) -- You hear a lot about John Bartley's ability to light the dark and Mark Snow's knack for setting just the right mood through music, and the skills of both are on vibrant display here. Also, David Duchovny gets to (somewhat controversially) take Mulder to the dark side as he obsessively molds gargoyles in a dead man's apartment.
3. "War of the Coprophages" (12) -- In the most underrated of Morgan's four scripts, the cleverly satirical takes on Mulder (distracted by an attractive cockroach researcher named Bambi) and Scully (leaping at the phone every time it rings) are amusing for fans. Oddly, I also remember liking this episode before I knew it was a satire.
4. "Oubliette" (8) -- I've always loved this episode, and I was pleased to find it held up on this viewing. For one, there's an early appearance by Jewel Staite of "Higher Ground" and "Firefly," but the main appeal is Tracy Ellis's portrayal of an empathic former kidnap victim, along with the way Mulder connects to her.
5. "Syzygy" (13) -- This is another one I loved as a kid; whenever an "X-Files" case took place in a high school, I ate it up. Because the story involves people being controlled by a rare alignment of planets, it allows for Mulder and Scully to act amusingly brash toward each other ("I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals," Mulder tells Scully, explaining why he always drives).
6. "Paper Clip" (2) -- This is a great mythology episode where it truly looks like the CSM and his cronies are going to bury our heroes and the X-Files for good. But then Skinner turns the tables by sharing the contents of the digital tape with an entire nation of Native Americans, memorably telling the CSM, "This is where you pucker up and kiss my a**."
7. "Wetwired" (23) -- Duchovny got a chance to act outside the box in "Grotesque," and now Gillian Anderson gets her turn as Scully is influenced by subliminal TV messages. Her attempt to kill Mulder is especially effective since we've seen how close they've grown all season (even if they aren't aware of it themselves). We also see here that, contrary to popular perception, "The X-Files" is just as much Scully's quest as it is Mulder's: She's terrified by the notion that he is part of the conspiracy and she'll have to go it alone.
8. "Avatar" (21) -- Skinner takes center stage in this episode that's structured like one of those twisty conspiracy crime movies. Here, it becomes clear that Mitch Pileggi could step up and become a regular if the show ever asked him to.
9. "Hell Money" (19) -- This underrated ep has a great sense of place as it delves into San Francisco's Chinatown and chronicles a disturbing underground lottery where desperate immigrants put their body parts up for drawing.
10. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (4) --Peter Boyle's performance as a depressed psychic who knows how everyone will die adds a lot of heart to this otherwise whimsical hour.
11. "Revelations" (11) -- This episode about a boy showing signs of stigmata pulls off a neat trick of flipping the script. By emphasizing Scully's religious upbringing (which she is slightly uncomfortable about) and Mulder's devout atheism (which he is slightly arrogant about), Scully becomes the believer and Mulder the skeptic.
12. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (20) -- I used to hate this episode, but I enjoyed it on this viewing and learned to appreciate it more by reading the Onion AV Club's glowing write-up. I'm glad that not every episode is this self-reflexive and silly, but it's OK to do it once.
13 and 14. "Nisei" (9) and "731" (10) -- The government baddies are at their most nefarious here, experimenting on humans using alien DNA and then discarding the corpses. This two-parter is memorable for Mulder's standoff with the CIA agent on the train car, which contains a caged hybrid and a bomb. And like the Season 2 finale "Anasazi," it's a great example of Scully's level-headed protectiveness of her almost off-the-rails partner.
15 and 16. "Piper Maru" (15) and "Apocrypha" (16) -- With these famous black oil episodes, it's best to watch them as a self-contained story and not think about the big picture. This is the point in the mythology timeline when it becomes obvious that the story is only going to get more convoluted; still, the episodes themselves can be fun to watch.
17. "Talitha Cumi" (24) -- It's not an awful season finale, ending with the shot of the shapeshifting bounty hunter -- who is like this show's Terminator -- closing in on Mulder, Scully and the good alien healer who could be the father of Max from "Roswell." But it's also a launching pad for many more seasons of the mythology beating around the bush rather than giving us answers, so in that sense it's a missed opportunity to have an amazing finale to an amazing season.
18. "Teso Dos Bichos" (18) -- This "killer pussycats" episode is probably the most reviled of Season 3, with critics calling it a throwback to the clunkier first season. But it's not as bad as its reputation, and it has one of the series' great gross-outs: The toilets filled with rats trying to escape the sewers.
19. "2Shy" (6) -- Revisiting the Tooms template, we get a killer who is driven by a genetic need; he needs fat, whereas Tooms needed livers. In 1995, it was cutting-edge to explore the dangers of meeting people online, but it holds up today.
20. "D.P.O." (3) -- This is the first of the new breed of polished, efficient MOTWs, with memorable performances by Giovanni Ribisi as Lightning Boy and Jack Black as his buddy.
21. "Pusher" (17) -- This is a classic episode (which would get a sequel later) about a guy who can get people to do his bidding just by telling them to. It doesn't work as well for me as it does for other fans, perhaps because the killer seems like such a slimeball, unlike, for example, the slightly sympathetic killer from Season 2's "Irresistible."
22. "The Blessing Way" (1) -- The season gets off to a slow and mystical start as Mulder -- recovering from smoke inhalation and desert exposure in a Native American healing tent -- sees visions of Deep Throat and his dad reminding him to trust no one and that the truth is out there.
23. "The Walk" (7) -- I always wondered if that actor actually was a quadruple amputee (eventually I read that he is not, making me appreciate the camera trickery). This ep is a worthy commentary on soldiers feeling abandoned by their country, but it's a bit heavy handed.
24. "The List" (5) -- There's not a lot of suspense here. We know that the executed convict is killing from beyond the grave, and we know that the warden is corrupt (probably because he's played by J.T. Walsh).
What are your favorite episodes from Season 3 of "The X-Files?" Share your thoughts in the comment thread below.
P.S. One of my favorite memories of Thanksgiving in the pre-DVD, pre-Netflix days was when FX would show all-day "X-Files" marathons. They were fan-picked episodes, so I sat there enjoying but not fully understanding the mythology episodes. I thought "This seems somewhat interesting. Someday I'll watch them in order, from the beginning, so I can know what's going on." And now I'm finally doing that (watching them in order, not necessarily understanding what's going on).
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:34:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/25/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-3Rewatching and reviewing the classics: ‘X-Files’ Season 2http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/6/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-2
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Although I'm partial to Season 1 of the "X-Files" because of the lovable, experimental clunkiness of many episodes, Season 2 is pretty darn good also, and it's certainly more polished. It starts slow, with the first "closing of the X-Files" arc, which means that for six episodes, Mulder and Scully stumble upon X-Files without actually working the X-Files beat. Also making the early episodes depressing is the fact that Scully is barely in them, because, as all X-Philes know, Gillian Anderson was pregnant.
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These dark days did allow for the much-beloved Scully abduction arc; more screen time for Skinner; and the introductions of the awesomely, somewhat hilariously angry X (the replacement for the late Deep Throat) and the Cigarette Smoking Man's lackey, Krycek.
Season 2 (1994-95, Fox) features arguably the best mythology episodes of the series (but also some duds, as I'll explain in my episode rankings) and one of the very best monster-of-the-week hours (and it even happened while the X-Files were closed!).
Here, I rank the episodes from Season 2, the year it became clear that "The X-Files" wasn't a fad, it was a mainstream hit.
1. "The Host" (episode 2) -- Some people like to say "It's what you don't see that's scary" to defend movies or TV shows that cut corners. But a more accurate phrase is "What you do see is scary, but what you imagine after that is scarier." You gotta start with a creepy creature, and the Flukeman fits the bill. I love the scene where they flush a section of sewer and the monster is caught in the drain, inches away from the faces of Mulder and the sewer worker. And the scene of the Flukeman standing in the bowels of a porta-potty, looking up. And the idea of him being hauled around in the waste tanker. It's a wonderfully disgusting episode that earns its status as a classic.
2. "Die Hand Die Verletzt" (14) -- I have a soft spot for yarns about the horrors of high school, so I've always liked this one about a cult of devil-worshipping administrators who runs a small-town school. And a substitute teacher who puts even those people's evil acts to shame.
3. "Irresistible" (13) -- It's barely an X-File -- the only paranormal element is that Donnie Pfaster appears to morph into Satan at random moments -- and it's inexplicable why Scully is inordinately creeped out by this particular bad guy. But the performance by Nick Chinlund is mesmerizingly good; Pfaster is somehow sympathetic even as he lures women to their deaths.
4-5. "Colony" (16) and "End Game" (17) -- I think of these as the "Terminator" episodes of "The X-Files," in a good way. The alien bounty hunter goes around terminating alien-human hybrid clones. He can morph into visages of people he sees, just like the T-1000. And, most notably, Mark Snow's music heavily riffs from "Terminator." As a bonus, we see Mulder's sister Samantha -- actually a bunch of clones, but close enough -- for the first time, not to mention Mulder's mom and pop, and this was still at a time when the mythology was fresh rather than repetitive.
6. "One Breath" (8) -- The Lone Gunmen analyze Scully's cells and determine she is dying. And then later she is fine, without explanation. The episode should be dismissed as one giant cheat, but I love it anyway and think it's the most emotional episode of the series up to this point. This is a case of craftsmanship -- acting, editing, music -- turning a mediocre script into a great finished product.
7. "Red Museum" (10) -- Those Wisconsin vegetarians with the white robes and red turbans are the most visually evocative of all the cult members "The X-Files" introduced. The episode itself is good, too, as M&S insinuate themselves into a small-town conflict between economics and religion, and then it surprises us with mythology -- the guy who killed Deep Throat is bumping off people involved with producing genetically enhanced cattle. Up till this point, it was either MOTW or Mythology, so it was a neat twist to see both in one episode.
8. "3" (7) -- After Scully is abducted -- by aliens or the government, or both -- but before she returns, we get one episode where the X-Files are reinstated and Mulder goes to investigate the case. There's a nearby forest fire that doesn't play into the plot; these so-called vampires can come back to life without explanation; and even though this should be an acting showcase for David Duchnovny (trivia time: this is the only episode without Gillian Anderson), Mulder just comes off as dour and tired. And yet I dig this episode because it tried, and in terms of the emotional pacing of the series, it needs to exist. It's a successful failure, in a way.
9. "F. Emasculata" (22) -- Here's another example of MOTW (or rather, disease of the week) combined with mythology (a pharmaceutical company uses an unsuspecting prison populace as test subjects). The incinerator room where the lab-coated bad guys burn the infected corpses is a classic setting.
10. "Anasazi" (25) -- This season-ending cliffhanger is actually more of a great character piece than a great mythology piece. Mulder is so angrily obsessed with uncovering the cover-up -- in this case, that the government has known for years that ETs exist -- that he almost gets himself killed, captured or tricked into being framed more than once. It's Scully who sees how the villains are operating and keeps a level head, making this a definitive episode of why their partnership works. Bonus points: This is the ep where Mulder calls the CSM a "black-lunged son of a b****."
11. "Sleepless" (4) -- Ex-soldiers who haven't slept in 24 years due to a military medical experiment start being killed off. That's one of the most creative ideas from the early seasons. Also, Krycek is introduced here as Mulder's new partner, and up until the final scene where he's revealed as the CSM's toady, he actually seems like a decent guy. I even feel for him a bit as Mulder repeatedly kicks him to the curb.
12. "Dod Kalm" (19) -- Mulder and Scully start rapidly aging on a ghost ship. In my opinion, the makeup effects aren't as terrible as many people claim. The dead, rusting ship is an evocative setting, and this is a rare ep to take place outside the United States -- the sea off Norway, in this case. Also, Lydecker from "Dark Angel" gives a good guest turn.
13. "Soft Light" (23) --Tony Shalhoub, pre-Adrian Monk, has a condition where his shadow vaporizes people. It makes no sense that he hangs out in a train station with soft light in order to keep people safe; couldn't he stay at home, or in his laboratory?. The twist of Mr. X actually being a bad guy here is unexpected. I still kind of like this episode as a lovable clunker.
14. "Our Town" (24) -- This one has some nicely disgusting imagery, such as a river that runs red due to the runoff of blood from the chicken plant, and the woman who is shot and falls into a vat of chicken byproducts, not to mention the idea of townsfolk who all get a rare brain disease because they've been eating their own dead.
15. "Little Green Men" (1) -- A lesser example (compared to "End Game" and "Anasazi") of the lengths Scully will go to -- here it's Puerto Rico -- to protect the obsessive Mulder. And so the understated theme of Season 2 is set from the get-go. One oddity of this ep is that the bad guys are seriously trying to kill M&S. But later in the season, the CSM says he wants Mulder alive. And then in the season finale, he tries to kill Mulder. Usually, I think the bad guys aim to confuse Mulder, so it's weird when they blatantly (but only briefly) try to kill him.
16. "Fearful Symmetry" (18) -- An invisible elephant trampling people makes for a cool opening teaser. But 44 minutes later, it's still never explained why these animals are invisible; it's almost as if the writers forgot to explain it. So I'll categorize this ep as another clunker I kind of like despite itself.
17. "Blood" (3) -- People get subliminal messages from appliances to kill other people. It's not a bad premise, but it's more weird than creepy, so the tone is off.
18. "Humbug" (20) -- The first episode written by Darin Morgan, the "X-Files" resident comedy writer, is absolutely adored by fans. Some even rank it as the best episode of the series (or among the best, trailing other Morgan scripts). I appreciate the way he shows us that an X-File can be weird rather than scary -- in this case, a guy's detachable twin rampages through a circus sideshow community. However, I'm an "X-Files" fan because of the scary stuff. It's just a matter of personal taste; no offense is intended.
19. "Excelsis Dei" (11) -- A standard X-File about a haunted old-folks home.
20. "Aubrey" (12) -- A standard X-File about a murderer reincarnated through his unwitting granddaughter.
21. "The Calusari" (21) -- A standard X-File about a boy who is possessed by the Devil. It's like a less-scary, less-sensible "Exorcist."
22. "Fresh Bones" (15) -- A standard X-File about voodoo and dead people being brought back to life. Along with "3" and "Fearful Symmetry," this is one of those episodes that doesn't even bother to venture an explanation of how the impossible is possible.
23-24. "Duane Barry" (5) and "Ascension" (6) -- The former proves that "The X-Files" can do a hostage drama just fine and the latter proves it can do a chase story just fine. But I like my "X-Files" to feature X-Files, thank you very much, so this mythology two-parter doesn't rank among my personal favorites.
25. "Firewalker" (9) -- It's notable for being the first episode where Mulder and Scully are reunited on the X-Files beat, so that should be reason enough to celebrate it. However, the volcano setting, which should be deliciously evocative, doesn't ring true. And the idea of a dangerous silicon-based life form, which is right in the "X-Files'" wheelhouse, feels like a lift from the Season 1 classics "Ice" and "Darkness Falls." Even the worst episodes of "The X-Files" aren't worthless, but something has to rank last, and this one simply is not better than any other episode from Season 2.
What are your favorite episodes from Season 2 of "The X-Files"? Share your rankings below.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Sat, 06 Nov 2010 02:29:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/11/6/Rewatching-and-reviewing-the-classics-XFiles-Season-2Rewatching and reviewing the classics: 'X-Files' Season 1http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/10/22/My-top-10-Season-1-XFiles-episodes
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My couch, my TV, a pile of "X-Files" guidebooks from my home library, and a browser tab permanently set on <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/tvshow/the-xfilesmillennium,49/2/" target="_blank">The Onion AV Club's "X-Files" blog</a> -- that's what's been keeping me busy the last couple weeks outside of work. And frankly, I've had a blast watching my "X-Files" DVDs with no lights on in the middle of the night.
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As regular readers of my blog may have surmised, I am a fairly big "X-Files" fan. I started watching late in the game, around Season 6, but thanks to syndication, I eventually saw every episode at least once. I enjoyed the new movie two years ago, but it had been awhile since I had revisited the series. Bored with "The Event" (the latest "Next X-Files"), now seemed like a good time to re-engage.
As you'll recall, "The X-Files" was two shows in one: Mythology episodes and monster-of-the-week episodes. I slightly prefer the MOTWs. I approach mythology episodes differently than most viewers: I just try to turn my brain off and enjoy the journey, the quest, the vibe of the whole thing -- because, eventually, the grand story arc gets too muddled to follow.
But part of the pleasure of Season 1 (1993-94, Fox) is that the myth-arc can be followed along with, and even watching these shows 17 years after they aired, I get to thinking about all the directions Chris Carter and his writers COULD have gone in. Was the overall story ultimately satisfying? That's a question for reviews of future seasons. Did it start out good? Few will argue that point.
Here are my top 10 Season 1 episodes:
1. "Darkness Falls" (episode 20) -- The idea of wandering around your town after dark is vaguely unsettling, but the idea of wandering around the dark woods is palpably creepy, chilling, and rife with possibilities for monsters. (In other words, it's a wonderful setting, if you're a horror fan.) In this case, it's bugs from the inside of an ancient tree that cocoon their victims -- that's frightening, because they can't be physically fought off like most theoretical monsters. Also, it ends with M&S in a hospital looking totally roughed up by the bugs. No "hitting the reset button" at the end of this episode (although, of course, they'd be fine at the start of the next one).
2. "Gender Bender" (14) -- There's a scene where Scully is facing down a cult member in a damp, steamy alley, and the cinematography is delicious. On this viewing, I literally sat up and said "Wow, that is gorgeous" to an empty room. It took awhile for cinematographer John Bartley to learn how to light the dark -- indeed, there are parts of early episodes that are as visually bland as an old Sci-Fi Channel show -- but he totally figures out how to do it here.
3. "The Erlenmeyer Flask" (24) -- If you got any sense from the first 23 eps that Mulder would be able to outsmart the government conspirators, the season finale definitively demonstrates how much he is in over his head. He sees alien-hybrid bodies floating in tanks (an image James Cameron would borrow for "Avatar") and Scully gets her hands on an alien embryo. Then Deep Throat is killed, and it's clear to the viewer that the bad guys are merely LETTING Mulder and Scully live. Somehow that's even scarier than if M&S were barely escaping.
4. "Ice" (8) -- This is essentially a remake of John Carpenter's "The Thing" (which was also a remake). But interestingly, fans of "The Thing," rather than angrily rejecting this episode as a rip-off, actually embrace it. That might be in part because the makers of "Ice" openly acknowledge the "Thing" influence. It's also because it's really good. And how about Vancouver's versatility -- here, it believably stands in for the Arctic.
5. "Deep Throat" (2) -- There's a wonderful innocence to this episode, embodied by the stoned teenage lovebirds (one of whom is Seth Green) who enjoy watching test flights of planes built with UFO technology at an Idaho air force base. Mulder, of course, isn't content to watch from outside the fence; he sneaks in, sees an alien spacecraft, and then gets brain-wiped. Throw in the introduction of the titular inside source, and the mythology is off to a great start.
6. "Space" (9) -- A commenter on the AV Club's threads said it beautifully: "The clunkers are part of what makes 'The X-Files' great." "Space," widely regarded as one of the worst episodes of the series, is a clunker that I absolutely adore. Mulder and Scully spend most of the episode standing at the back of the NASA control room, the editing is sloppy, the special effects are atrocious, and a ton of stock footage is used. Yet the script is solidly creepy (an ex-astronaut is possessed by a space ghost that looks like the Face of Mars), Mulder's passion for the space program is addictive, and even after 200 episodes, this was the only time the action actually took place off the planet.
7. "Squeeze" (3) -- Not that every MOTW hour is the same, but a template of sorts is laid out here. A creepy creature (Tooms, memorably played by Doug Hutchison, can stretch through tight spaces); a thought-out backstory for the creature (after Tooms kills his victim, he eats their liver for sustenance); and Mulder's uncovering of the truth despite resistance from his bosses, and to a lesser extent, Scully.
8. "Pilot" (1) -- Not many pilot episodes hold up this well so many years later. So often, they are retrospectively clunky: The actors haven't found their characters, the pacing is slow and the story is filled with exposition. The "X-Files" launcher holds up, though, as Mulder investigates an apparent abduction in the Oregon woods. The abduction yarn hasn't made sense to me on any viewing of this episode, but I'm OK with that; the loose threads were something I would learn to accept in order to enjoy "The X-Files."
9. "Ghost in the Machine" (7) -- This seems like the most dated "X-Files" episode, as it basically retells the HAL 9000 arc from "2001: A Space Odyssey," only inside a skyscraper instead of a spaceship. This was still in the era (1993) when computers controlling everything was a spooky sci-fi concept; today, the idea of computers controlling everything is scary for innocuous reasons (think of how much doing your job depends on your computer functioning properly). So I love the naïveté of this episode.
10. "E.B.E." (17) -- We see how unquenchable Mulder's search for knowledge is as he follows a truck involved in a UFO encounter all the way across the United States. And we see Scully's loyalty as she stays by his side, despite pressure from their bosses to steer clear of this case. Also, the Lone Gunmen (who like Mulder because his ideas are "even weirder" than theirs) are introduced.
Notes on the 14 episodes that missed my top 10:
11. "Tooms" (21) -- This sequel to "Squeeze" explores the character further, and for Mulder-Scully 'shippers, there's that great stakeout scene where Scully tries to call Mulder "Fox" ("I even made my parents call me Mulder," he says). And later Mulder says, "If there's iced tea in there, it might be love." I wasn't into the romance side of "The X-Files" back in the day, but I adore those subtle M-S moments today.
12. "Fallen Angel" (10) -- We see Mulder's passion for finding the truth, particularly when he latches onto the underside of an Army truck to get into a cordoned-off area.
13. "Eve" (11) --Definitely a classic (and it inspired the band name of Eve 6!), but the evil clone girls are so unsympathetic and creepy that this episode is almost too effective to earn my affections.
14. "Conduit" (4) -- A decent mythology hour that introduces Mulder's quest to find his possibly abducted sister.
15. "Beyond the Sea" (13) -- A classic because of Brad Dourif's performance as a death-row inmate who uses his psychic abilities to stop another crime and earn a deal. And because Scully stands up for herself, telling the con she'll throw the switch herself ("you son of a b****") if he's lying.
16. "Roland" (23) -- A decent (but still predictable) possession tale, anchored by a great performance by the guy playing the autistic janitor.
17. "Shapes" (19) -- An unsurprising werewolf yarn (Mulder knows it's a werewolf case before he even arrives on the scene), but it evokes the mountains and valleys of Montana nicely.
18. "Miracle Man" (18) -- The first of several religious-themed episodes. It suggests that the titular faith healer wasn't a con man after all, which is a neat twist.
19. "Lazarus" (15) -- This cop-to-criminal body-switching episode is well played by the guest star, but it's not too surprising.
20. "The Jersey Devil" (5) -- A MOTW that doesn't have many surprises (it's just a female version of Big Foot), but it does have a nice sequence where Mulder trades places with a homeless man, showing the lengths he'll go to solve a case.
21. "Young at Heart" (16) -- Mulder can't forget his first case, but this eppy is kind of forgettable.
22. "Shadows" (6) -- A ghost killer. Which means silly floating knives and whatnot.
23. "Fire" (12) -- A guy can spontaneously combust in a controlled way. No surprises in the plot, and Mulder's relationship with his British ex never rang true to me, even on my first viewing.
24. "Born Again" (22) -- This tedious girl-possessed-by-a-ghost yarn is the worst episode of Season 1. But -- and this is how much I love "The X-Files" -- it's not so bad that I would never watch it again.
It had some classics, it had some clunkers, it set the stage for eight more seasons and two movies, it looked great, and I loved every minute of it. What were your favorite episodes of Season 1 of "The X-Files?" Share your lists and comments below.
X-Files/MillenniumTelevisionTelevision (Classic)Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:46:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/10/22/My-top-10-Season-1-XFiles-episodesAre TV shows getting dumber or am I getting smarter?http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/2/14/Are-TV-shows-getting-dumber-or-am-I-getting-smarter
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//x-files.jpg">
Are TV shows getting dumber or am I getting smarter? I'm not talking about TV as a whole, because obviously it's dumber than it was 10 years ago. This is because of the influx of cheap TV -- reality shows, game shows and talk shows -- taking over primetime slots.
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For the purposes of this discussion, I'm talking about quality scripted TV -- the shows that are good enough for me to watch and blog about. So basically, I'm asking, "Are smart TV shows getting dumber?"
To lead off this discussion, I'll take a swing at my favorite punching bag on this forum: "Lost." A good number of the "surprise twists" and revelations on the show aren't surprising. For example, a commercial break for a recent episode ended with a shot of Un-Locke walking past Locke's corpse, accompanied by one of those classic off-key violin strains. But I -- and all viewers -- already knew that Un-Locke wasn't really Locke.
My friend Another Matt said that our "I already knew that!" reaction comes largely because the music scorers on "Lost" overuse the off-key violin strain. Also, up to this season, he experienced "Lost" via the DVDs, so he could watch it as one continuous story, where the slowness of the tale and the media's over-hyping of the "surprises" wasn't as apparent. He said this is the ideal way to watch "Lost."
I think he's onto something. When written on the page, the "surprises" on "Lost" aren't meant to be surprises. But at some point during production, someone decides they should be treated like surprises. So the writers respect the audience's intelligence, but further along the production line, the producers assume we are all idiots, or that this is the first episode we've seen. TV has a long tradition of being terrified of a viewer getting lost and turning the channel, and that's hard for them to overcome, even though "Lost" is clearly a DVR, Hulu or DVD type of show.
Another problem with "Lost" is the contrived way they keep information from the viewer. They do this by having a character that knows something not tell what they know; this is why I hate Juliet, Ben and the new leader of The Others. Especially Juliet. As the show goes on, it becomes more and more clear that there was no organic reason for her to not answer Jack's questions about The Others and The Island. Her behavior was dictated by the writers deciding, "We can't reveal that yet."
"Fringe" -- like "Lost," a J.J. Abrams production -- recently had an "I already knew that" moment that was treated like a huge revelation. Since late last season, it has been obvious that our Peter is actually alternate-dimension Peter, Walter having kidnapped him at a young age after his Peter died. In the most recent episode, Olivia's special vision kicked in, and she saw Peter glowing, confirming his alternate-dimension-ness. As with the "Lost" moments, this was a confirmation, not a surprise.
A decade ago, were stories presented so deliberately? By my selective memory, they were not. I remember being surprised by the story twists on my favorite shows. I'll use "Buffy" as an example. Angel killing Miss Calendar. Faith giving a peek inside her head: "No, you don't get it. I don't care." Spike being in love with Buffy. These twists all had clues leading up the big reveal; it would be poor writing if they didn't. And yet, they didn't seem so deliberate, like the revelations on "Lost" and "Fringe." "Buffy" was a step ahead of me, but I feel like I'm a step ahead of "Lost" and "Fringe."
Now, granted, there's also the other extreme to be wary of -- being three or four steps ahead of the audience -- and there's no better example than "The X-Files." I never knew what the heck was going on in the mythology episodes of "The X-Files," and some TV scholars have suggested that even the creators of "The X-Files" didn't know what was going on (although Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz and company have never admitted this).
And yet: I think "X-Files" is a smarter show than "Lost" (by a lot) and "Fringe" (by a little). A couple years ago, Entertainment Weekly did a "Versus" issue, and one of the matchups was "X-Files" versus "Lost." It almost made me angry that they were even comparing the two.
Look, I admire a lot of things about "Lost." But I felt like "The X-Files" was smarter than me, and I feel like I'm smarter than "Lost." "The X-Files" doled out information organically (based on the conspirators' plans); "Lost" doles out information artificially (based on the writers' timeline).
I think I'm at roughly the same intelligence level I was at 10 years ago, but TV seems to think I have gotten dumber.
Have the elite TV shows dumbed themselves down? Or is the storytelling the same while we, as viewers, are getting more savvy? Share your thoughts below.
X-Files/MillenniumFringeTelevisionLostSun, 14 Feb 2010 18:00:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/2/14/Are-TV-shows-getting-dumber-or-am-I-getting-smarter